11/15/13

I had the afternoon off, so I walked Thistle down by the lake and along the bluff at Sheridan Park.

Notable finds from this walk were Cotoneaster divaricatus and Shepherdia canadensis.

I found a large, escaped Cotoneaster population growing on an open slope with Juniperus communis. This species will have to be added to the naturalized (and natural) flora of SE Wisconsin. The state herbarium has two previous records from the region. One was annotated as cultivated. The other was potentially naturalized in Racine county (so it probably should have been in our flora). From the looks of this population, we may be seeing more of it in the coming years. The thickets, woodlands, and shores of the near-lake parts of Milwaukee County are a who's who escaped shrubs.

I had seen Shepherdia earlier this summer in Kenosha county, but the leaves on the plants I observed there were much smaller, so I suspected, probably in part because of all the crap I've seen in this area, that this was an escaped Viburnum (a real ID whiff). Robert Curtis set me straight. Shepherdia canadensis is uncommon and restricted to sandy areas very near Lake Michigan in SE Wisconsin.

Posted on 16 de novembro de 2013, 03:50 AM by darkecologist