Wetlands species presents ID challenge to botanists

Wetlands are natural habitats featuring, obviously, some water. Sometimes a lot of water. They come in many varieties, and they provide home for a huge array of plant and animal species.

Across North America, unfortunately, many kinds of wetlands are becoming increasingly rare, as they have commonly fallen victim to urbanization and landscape manipulation. Of course, when wetlands are sufficiently disturbed or destroyed, their resident plants and animals also suffer, commonly disappearing. In the last two decades, more research has focused on the plight of wetlands and to efforts protecting them. We would do well to make sure that legislation and public awareness remain to safeguard these precious habitats, in all their diversity.

This week's mystery plant is always found in wetlands. It occurs from New Jersey and Delaware south through Florida and west to eastern Texas. It seems to like the coastal plain most, although it is occasionally found in Piedmont environments.

It's a perennial, forming dense clumps. Soft, needle-like leaves are clustered at the base of a clump, which will produce several dozen elongated, flimsy flowering stems. Each stem will have a single chalky, spherical head at the top. The heads contain many flowers, all very tiny and collectively surrounded by bracts that are whitened because of the presence of thousands of tiny white hairs. These heads are about the size of a nickel, maybe a bit larger, and they are soft. (Botanists noticed long ago that when making their pressed specimens of this species, the heads would flatten out, and this has led to the plant's scientific name.) Although the individual flowers are quite small, the heads are prominent and conspicuous, and this plant has earned a reputation as an attractive, late spring wildflower.

This mystery plant has several hundred rather closely related cousins, most of which are tropical in origin. Because of the great variation that these various species exhibit and to the small size of the flowers, they are a challenge to botanists and somewhat difficult to identify.

This attractive species may be found in a variety of wet habitats, including Carolina bays, cypress ponds, cedar bogs, savannas and Sandhill seepages, usually in wetlands with still water (that is, not flowing). In a vigorous, healthy ecosystem, they may form huge patches, occurring by the thousands and producing quite a show, along with colorful orchids, sundews and pitcher plants. The late Robert K. Godfrey, a professor of mine at Florida State University and one of the foremost botanists of the Southeast, wrote a charming tribute to this plant, "abundantly decorating the shallow waters of pinelands as to appear like a shower of white confetti." (Godfrey's monumental "Aquatic and Wetland Plants of the Southeastern United States" is still available from the University of Georgia Press.)

John Nelson is the curator of the Herbarium at the University of South Carolina, in the Department of Biological Sciences. As a public service, the Herbarium offers free plant identifications. For more information, visit www.herbarium.org or call (803) 777-8196.

(Answer: "Bog buttons," "Hatpins," Eriocaulon compressum)

Photo by Linda Lee