You Can Only Find This Plant in New Jersey

Spring Beauty Claytonia virginica

Spring beauty is a plant found in abundance in the Eastern temperate deciduous forest of North America throughout many different habitat types including lawns, city parks, forests, roadsides, wetlands, bluffs, and ravines.

The very rare and endangered Spring Beauty variety hammondiae

But Hammond’s Yellow Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica var. hammondiae) is a very rare and endangered wildflower. Of interest here is that this variety only exists in a few patches of wet meadow in the northwest corner of New Jersey.

When we say rare, we mean this is not just the only place in NJ, or in the United States, but the only place on Earth where we know of this particular plant variety existing. That the location being in our often-misunderstood and highly developed state is another reminder that there are places of ecological and environmental importance in all parts of the planet.

Don't rush out to try to see this dime-sized gem of a flower. Thankfully, it is protected in The Nature Conservancy’s 100-acre Arctic Meadows Preserve. The Preserve itself is a rare inland acidic seep that because of the underlying geology and soils is a habitat where Hammond’s Yellow Spring Beauty can exist. (The blooms appeared in April.)

How did the plant and its habitat get discovered? I discovered in a post by Jim Wright that more than fifty years ago, naturalist Emilie K. Hammond noticed in a NJ meadow blooms which looked like Spring Beauty but were not the expected white or pinkish color but instead a deep yellow. Her discovery was reported to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, which researched the flower and categorized it as another color variation of the common Spring Beauty. Not big news.

When there was home construction near that meadow in the mid-1980s, a botanist for The Nature Conservancy, David Snyder, checked out the situation. He discovered that not only that were they that odd color, but they were growing in an unexpected kind of habitat and blooming long after the more common variety had finished. This was a new type of Spring Beauty, found only in this location.

The Nature Conservancy bought the 77-acre property in the 1990s to protect the rare flower, and has since added 23 acres of adjacent land.

And in New Jersey Bobcat News...

“Wildlife on Hidden Camera” by USFWS

This month I saw a few unusual New Jersey animal sighting stories in the news. One was a
"mystery animal" sighting in Ewing Township that was probably a fox that has shed its fur. Another was a news story about a bobcat that entered a house in Washington Township.

Bobcats typically avoid humans, so the incident is unusual. But bobcat sightings and encounters are on the rise in NJ. Later, in another part of the township, a bobcat attacked and injured a dog, and then a half hour later, police received a call that the bobcat was in a nearby barn.

Conservation officers snared the animal because they believed it was showing possible early signs of having rabies and it was removed by the Division of Fish and Wildlife for observation and possible testing.

Native New Jersey bobcats were almost extinct in New Jersey in the 1970s, but thanks to ongoing conservation efforts have been making a slow comeback.

Bobcats roam an average of seven miles a day, so they require lots of land. Car strike deaths is the leading cause of bobcat mortality in the state.

Having connected wild habitat for them is the best situation for them and would decrease their entry into populated areas, but that is a difficult task to accomplish in our densely populated state.

The Nature Conservancy in New Jersey is working to protect "Bobcat Alley," a 32,000-acre corridor of connected and protected habitat in northwestern New Jersey.

Bobcat Alley slideshow

Bobcat infographic via www.nature.org  click link for larger original 

Building Bobcat Alley

proposed bobcat alley - via www.nature.org

Bobcats are New Jersey’s last remaining wild cats. Once nearly extinct in our state, they are still endangered here, but making a comeback. The key to their success is habitat.

The Nature Conservancy is working to protect critical habitat for these beautiful cats in New Jersey. They call it "Bobcat Alley," and it's a place created by connecting preserved land between two great mountain ranges: the Appalachians and the Highlands.

The Bobcat Alley wildlife corridor will provide space for bobcats to hunt, raise young here and flourish.

You can help build Bobcat Alley by donating to The Nature Conservancy.