Status of Plants in Virginia

Abstract

OVERVIEW OF BOTANICAL DIVERSITY Virginia possesses a unique and varied assemblage of plant life. There are 3,164 species, subspecies and varieties of plants in Virginia (Weakley et al. 2012). As classified by the Virginia Departmentof Conservation and Recreation’s Division of Natural Heritage (DCR-DNH), they form some 94 ecological groups and 317 community types across five distinct physiographic provinces: Coastal Plain, Piedmont, Blue Ridge, Ridge and Valley, and Appalachian Plateau. The state extends 469 miles from east to west and 201 miles north to south at the widest points, enclosing 42,326 square miles of territory. This diverse range of environmental conditions supports the wide diversity of plant life found within the state. Virginia is on the northern boundary of many southern plant species and on the southern boundary of many northern plant species. This range overlap combined with seashore to mountain variation leads to one of the richer diversities of plant life within the continental United States. Virginia was the source of some of the earlier plant collections by European botanists (Berkeley and Berkeley 1963).Europeans started observing and documenting Virginia’s flora as early as the 1500s (Hugo and Ware 2012). Over the next two centuries, there were various explorations and reports by laypersons and scientifically trained individuals. In the eighteenth century, there were significant contributions to the documentation and descriptions of plants in Virginia. In 1739 J. F. Gronovius published John Clayton’s work titled Flora Virginica describing some 500 or so plant species (Hugo and Ware 2012). John Mitchell, James Greenway, and prominently, John Bartram wrote extensively about plants of Virginia. Later, such botanists as Andre Michaux, Asa Gray, and John Torrey published work that included plants of Virginia (Hugo and Ware 2012). Work toward a new Flora of Virginia began in earnest in 1926 when the Virginia Academy of Science established a flora committee through the leadership of A.B. Massey of Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Hugo and Ware 2012). Through Massey’s vision and the efforts of many subsequent scientists, a new Flora of Virginia was finally published in 2012 documenting 3,164 plant species, subspecies, and varieties in 189 families in the commonwealth of Virginia (Weakley et al. 2012). The public charge to inventory and protect this wealth of plant biodiversity is given to the Office of Plant Protection within the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which under the Virginia Endangered Plant and Insect Species Act has responsibility to list and protect Virginia’s endangered and threatened plant species. There were 26 species listed in 2013, whereas there were 17 species listed under the federal Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Townsend 2014). The Virginia Endangered Plant and Insect Species Act also contains provisions for the recovery of endangered and threatened species in Virginia. The VDCR, DNH and the Virginia Department of