Studying New Jersey's Rare and Threatened Native Plants

My Rutgers alumni newsletter has a story about ecologist and biology professor Jay Kelly who studies the Garden State’s rare and threatened native plants to find ways to protect and restore them. I think most citizens if asked about endangered species think of animals, birds, perhaps fish, but plants are also part of the ecology that is threatened.   (Yes, also 

Kelly grew up playing in the woods near his home in Middletown, NJ, and had an early attraction to nature. The Rutgers alum is a professor of biology at Raritan Valley Community College.

New Jersey’s 339 endangered plant species are largely still endangered due to habitat destruction, an unchecked deer population (responsible for a 70-80% decline in the forest understory during the past 70 years), and the growing number of invasive foreign species that choke out native plants.

American chaffseed

One of those plants is American Chaffseed (Schwalbea americana) which in found in the Pine Barrens. This hairy little plant with tubular purple flowers has been listed as a federal endangered species since 1992. 

How rare is it? Rare enough that by 2000, its entire Northeastern range was limited to a small stand in Brendan T. Byrne State Forest. 

Kelly began monitoring the chaffseed colony when he was a graduate student at Rutgers and discovered that this hemiparasite plant (relying on other plants early in its life cycle) preferred a nearby plant—the Maryland golden aster—for nutrients, and began cultivating it in a greenhouse alongside the asters. Those seedlings were transplanted into the wild starting in 2006 and are leading to some recovery in our state.

Another recovering plant is seabeach amaranth. This low-growing beach plant disappeared from New Jersey in 1913 but was spotted growing down the Shore in 2000. Kelly determined that human activities—particularly driving on the beach (which is allowed in Island Beach State Park and some New Jersey towns) and beach-raking—were the greatest threats to the species. With his students, they fenced off a portion of the upper beach at Island Beach State Park as a protected area and the experiment has led to a 600% increase in plants.

A new plant species he is focused on is bog asphodel, a plant that grows nowhere in the world but New Jersey. Kelly is conducting statewide surveys of many of the other 800-plus rare and endangered plant species in the state and working with the Partnership for New Jersey Plant Conservation to strengthen protections for rare plants.

bog asphodel   Narthecium ossifragum