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

Carnivorous Pitcher Plants

                  Pitcher plants in Edwin Forsythe NWR, NJ - Photo: R.Albers/USFWS

October is baseball playoffs time but these pitchers have a longer season and can be deadly. The pitcher plant is one of those plants that is best known for letting flies and insects think they’re getting a free meal and then making them their own meal.

Pitcher plants tend to grow where most other plants can’t grow. The soils in which they grow are poor in minerals and extremely acidic. The plants don’t require insects to survive but it is thought that extra nutrients from insects allow plants to grow larger and healthier, and are more likely to reproduce.

They are named for their tall, tube-like stems, which resemble pitchers for water.

Sarracenia purpurea is commonly known as the purple pitcher plant, northern pitcher plant, turtle socks, or side-saddle flower and is a carnivorous plant in the family Sarraceniaceae.

In New Jersey, they’re common in the bogs and swamps of the Pine Barrens and can also be found in Kuser Bog at High Point State Park in Sussex County (a cedar bog believed to be the highest in the world) and in the White Lake Natural Resource Area in Warren County.

Prey insects, often small flies and ants, are attracted by the plant’s scent. Evidently, the plant’s chemical compounds attract various insects.

The pitcher plant’s frilly leaf tips have stiff, downward-pointing hairs. These hairs prevent the insects from climbing back out and they end up in a pool of liquid at the bottom of the pitcher. The liquid contains digestive enzymes that break down the insects and allow the plant to absorb the nutrients.

Pitcher plant showing the hairs - Photo by Kmmeyer - Northern Minnesota, CC BY-SA 3.0 

New Jersey actually has three groups of native carnivorous plants. Besides pitcher plants, we have sundews and bladderworts. Carnivorous plants evolved to eat animals because they grow in wet, nutrient-poor soils and so have adapted to get nutrition in other ways.

The purple pitcher plant is the showiest of the three with bright foliage and red flowers it will stand out in a bog or swamp plants and can often be seen growing from sphagnum moss.