Annual Report Rare Plant Monitoring Program Table of Contents 7 10 6 14 3 Editor’s Corner The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources provides equal opportunity in 4 2019 Year in Review its employment, programs, services, and functions under an Affirmative Action Plan. If you have any questions, please write to 7 Muskroot Monitoring Finds New Population, Equal Opportunity Office, Refines Survey Timing Department of Interior, Washington, D.C. 20240. 10 Volunteers, Past Records Help Root Out Prairie Turnip Trends This publication is available in alternative format (large print, Braille, audio tape. etc.) 12 upon request. Please call 608-261-6449 for Interviews: Volunteers Talk About Rare Plant more information. Monitoring Program Editor: Kevin Doyle 14 Graphic Design: Rebecca Rudolph Field Notes & Photos State of Wisconsin Department of Natural This program is supported with funds from the Natural Resources Box 7921 Resources Foundation’s Wisconsin Rare Plant Madison, WI 53707 Preservation Fund. Photo credit: Don Evans English sundew was re-located in Ashland County for the first time in 40 years. 2 Editor’s Corner Rare Plants by the Numbers 2,366 total plant taxa 344, or 14.5 percent are rare 72 listed as endangered 58 listed as threatened 192 listed as “special concern” meaning they are suspected to be in decline 6 federally listed plants • Northern monkshood (Aconitum noveboracense) • Dwarf lake iris (Iris lacustris) • Eastern prairie fringed orchid (Platanthera leucophaea) • Dune thistle (Cirsium pitcheri) • Prairie bush clover (Lespedeza leptostachya) • Fassett’s locoweed Photo credit: Ryan O’Connor (Oxytropis campestris var. Kevin Doyle records data for a rare plant survey. chartacea) 163 With a very high potential for extirpation from the state in hard-to-access spots like private Photo credit: Josh Mayer plants are endemic to land, military bases, or undeveloped 2 Fassett’s locoweed. Wisconsin, meaning they’re lakes. There is also a piece by a fellow found nowhere else in the RPMP volunteer on a more detailed world: Fassett’s locoweed and project to identify the best survey cliff cudweed. window for a small spring wildflower. The information RPMP volunteers By Kevin Doyle have collected documenting declines RPMP coordinator is now driving DNR efforts to reverse those trends. Whether hand As the Rare Plant Monitoring Program The Rare Plant Monitoring Program pollinating orchids to improve seed grows, so too does our impact on has always set out to address the first set, collecting seed from some of our the landscape. RPMP volunteers level of the conservation process: rarest plants for long-term storage, or visited more rare plant populations identifying if there is a problem. The working with local nurseries to grow in 2019 than any previous year, an next two levels, figuring out what is federally listed plants to reintroduce accomplishment that becomes more causing the problem and how to fix to the wild, there are things we are difficult and more impressive each it, can’t proceed without the basic doing to address biodiversity declines. year. And while volunteers located inventory work done in large part by These steps can only occur because 59 new rare plant populations, 63 RPMP volunteers. In fact, the Rare our team of rare plant monitors collect populations previously documented Plant Monitoring Program is the the information that tells us where to could not be found. Some of these largest source of rare plant data in direct our efforts. populations are only temporarily Wisconsin and unique in the Midwest submerged as many lakes experience for its breadth of surveys statewide. There’s no doubt there’s more work to their highest levels in decades. do, but I am so encouraged by how Unfortunately, others have likely In this report you’ll read highlights RPMP volunteers step up each year. A disappeared as part of a global trend of many of your surveys, major special thanks to all 2019 volunteers. in biodiversity loss. rediscoveries of rare plants not seen I look forward to working together in in decades, and populations located 2020. wiatri.net/inventory/rareplants/ 3 Thank You to our 2019 Volunteers! Photo credit: Dan Roberts Photo credit: Paul Hlina Photo credit: Clayton Frazer Photo credit: Don Evans Photo credit: Paul Doxsee Derek Anderson Greg Gardner Sherry Pethers Susan Archer Jesse Haack Lynn Preston Jan Axelson Heidi Hankley Corey Raimond Mike Baker Roberta Herschleb Cindy Reed Mary Bartkowiak Paul Hlina Bill Reichenbach Carrie Becker Eric Howe Jon Rigden Danielle Bell Sue Johanen-Mayoleth George Riggin Maureen Bogdanski Ben Johnston Gwendolyn Rouse Christine Bohn Zach Kastern Michael Roy Ben Bomkamp Courtney Kerns John Scholze Dan Buckler Debbie Konkel Quita Sheehan Aaron Carlson Jesse Koyen Ann Stoda Ryan Clemo Samantha Koyen Juniper Sundance Kathryn Corio Zach Kron Lucas Turpin Dave Czoschke Mark Lange Tanna Worrell Bill Dodge Brian Lennie Mary Zaander Paul Doxsee Sarah Majerus Jim Zipple Don Evans Kay McClelland Abby Zwicke Joan Fritzler Jason Miller Tom Ganfield Kerstyn Perrett wiatri.net/inventory/rareplants/ 4 2019 Year in Review Volunteers in 2019 produced collect alerts land managers to flower (Phemeranthus rugospermus) another great year for the Rare Plant pressing threats and informs on-the- population only to find the site was Monitoring Program. They visited ground management necessary to now a parking lot. Debbie Konkel 42 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties and maintain these known populations. set out to relocate one of the rarest submitted over 250 rare plant reports, Data are also used for statewide, plants in Wisconsin, silver bladderpod a new record! regional, and even international (Lesquerella ludoviciana), known status assessments and conservation from a single bluff prairie in Pierce Most exciting, volunteers’ discovered planning. County. She visited the site but found 59 populations of rare plants in new the upper part of the bluff where the locations. That more than doubles the Unfortunately, searching for but not plants were last seen was covered number found the previous year, and finding a rare plant population goes with brush. More surveys are planned every one of these new populations with the territory. Many of these for this summer to confirm that the helps provide another backstop species are declining and populations species has been extirpated from the against extinction for these rare plants can wink out for a variety of reasons, state. Brian Lennie visited a known in Wisconsin. including changes in habitat quality, white lady’s slipper (Cypripedium predation, inbreeding depression and candidum) site twice in May 2019. As usual, most volunteers were sent disease. In 2019, RPMP volunteers He found some high quality habitat out in 2019 to revisit known rare submitted 63 “negative” reports in hanging on but no orchids. Brian felt plant populations. These “check ups” which they could not find the species the site could still support a lady’s produced updated reports on 191 they were looking for. Though some slipper population and will give it known populations, helping us reduce of these negative reports are due to another try next year. In other cases, the number of rare plant populations high lake levels temporarily flooding plants were not found but there is that haven’t been visited in 20 years, suitable habitat or other reasons, hope for the future. and helping increase our awareness of it’s likely some of the populations rare plant health. And this awareness have winked out. Tanna Worrell Enjoy some highlights from the year. informs action. The data volunteers revisited a known prairie fame- English sundew (Drosera anglica) carnivorous plant species in was relocated in Ashland County Wisconsin. Like other sundews, it for the first time in over 40 years. is found in fens and bogs, harsh RPMP Volunteer Don Evans was environments that have forced kayaking with Judy, his wife, when plants to find other ways to get they saw some interesting sundews nutrients. and snapped some photos. The plants were hard to determine but English sundew has stalked glands seemed close enough to English across its leaves. Small insects are sundew that it was worth revisiting attracted to the sweet secretions the site. Since Don lives pretty far from these glands but become from Ashland County, we contacted trapped, gummed to the leaf the sundew Dr. Sarah Johnson at Northland surface by their stickiness. Soon can digest College in Ashland. She went to the more glands bend toward the its nutrients. site with some students in canoes ensnared prey, and the entire leaf Finally, the and confirmed the identity. This is curls around it, more like a boa nutrients from only the second extant population constrictor than a plant. Eventually the dead of this state threatened plant. A the insect dies from exhaustion or insect are great find and a cool example asphyxiation. absorbed of collaboration among DNR, through the volunteers, and academia. Although the glands’ secretions leaf surface are sweet, they are also corrosive and fuel plant English sundew is one of 15 and help break the prey down so growth. wiatri.net/inventory/rareplants/ 5 Ann Stoda and her husband, Doug, met with biologists at Fort McCoy in Monroe County Though the priority of the to try to find a number of rare RPMP is revisiting rare plant In 2019, RPMP volunteers found plants on the military base last populations on public land, 59 new rare plant populations. seen several decades ago. In there are some volunteers who Don Evans was one of these total, they searched for five visit private property because volunteers. He found the state species and found four of they have special access to it threatened ram’s head lady’s them. The couple relocated or are willing to do the extra slipper (Cypripedium arietinum) the state threatened dwarf work to get permission.