98 THE GREAT LAKES BOTANIST Vol. 56 EMMA COLE’S 1901 GRAND RAPIDS FLORA : NOMENCLATURALLY UPDATED AND REVISED Garrett E. Crow Visiting Scholar, Department of Biology, Calvin College 3201 Burton SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4403 Adjunct Researcher, Michigan State University Herbarium Professor Emeritus, University of New Hampshire [email protected]; [email protected] ABSTRACT In 1901 Emma J. Cole published Grand Rapids Flora , a work that remains the most recent com - prehensive account of the plants specific to West Michigan and that is still consulted by those with interests in local native habitats, the historical status of rare and endangered plants once known from the area, and the flora of the region in general. However, to make Cole’s Flora , an important histori - cal document, more useful to the present day, an updated Checklist of the plants in her Flora is pre - sented in an alphabetic format that brings her plant names up-to-date with current nomenclature. The updated Checklist catalogs a total of 1275 taxa at the species level, whereas Cole’s (1901) Flora treated 1290 taxa (including varieties). Although Cole did not typically cite specimens in her Flora , it was documented by herbarium specimens that she collected and deposited in the Kent Scientific Institute (forerunner of the Grand Rapids Public Museum); a large number of Cole’s specimens are extant and are housed in the University of Michigan Herbarium, with a large number of duplicates located at the Michigan State University Herbarium and elsewhere. Cole also consulted specimens collected by students and colleagues in private collections, many of which are also extant. These specimens are now cited in the updated Checklist documenting nearly all the species in her Grand Rapids Flora . Remarkably about 97% of the species in the updated Checklist are documented by at least one voucher specimen; Cole’s Flora was remarkably well documented. Nomenclatural issues are also discussed. As a well-regarded teacher of botany at Central High School of Grand Rapids, Michigan, she had a great impact on her students, several of whom she mentions in her Flora ; some biographical information of these students is included here. KEYWORDS: Emma J. Cole, flora of Grand Rapids, Michigan flora, vascular plants, biodiver - sity, historical botany, herbarium voucher specimens. INTRODUCTION One hundred sixteen years ago Grand Rapids Flora: A Catalogue of the Flow - ering Plants and Ferns Growing Without Cultivation in the Vicinity of Grand Rapids, Michigan , by Emma J. Cole (1901) was published. Emma Jane Cole (1845–1910), a well-loved teacher at Central High School in Grand Rapids, was not only an instructor of botany, but served as the curator of the botanical col - lections of the Kent Scientific Insitution, then housed with the other natural his - tory collections of the Insititute at Central High, and was elected vice president of the Institute in 1900 (Stiver 2007, unpublished manuscript). Early in her 26- year career as teacher she began to see a great need for an up-to-date account of the plants of Grand Rapids, the seat of Kent County, Michigan, and the sur - 2 0 1 TABLE 1. Examples of entries from Cole’s Flora with corresponding entries from the updated Checklist. 7 Examples from Emma Cole’s Flora Corresponding Entry from Updated Checklist ORCHIDACEAE ORCHIDACEAE CYPRIPEDIUM L. MOCCASIN-FLOWER Cypripedium acaule Aiton; Pink Lady-slipper, Moccasin Flower, Stemless 403. C. acaule Ait. Stemless Lady’s Slipper Lady-slipper; Jun 1893 (ALBC); H. M. Bailey s.n., 23 May 1891 (MICH); In sphagnous swamps or dry woods; scarce. May. Skeels & Shaddick s.n., 27 May 1893 (MSC). In correspondence with Spruce Lake; Mill Creek woods; Bronner Lake; East St. Pinery; Hogadone Emma Cole during the process of proof-reading her manuscript, Luther Creek; Mud Lake, Plainfield; abundant in the Saddle-Bag Swamp region until Livingston reminisced: “In 1885 my brother Lincoln B. L.[ivingston] 1895. found a specimen in Saddle Bag Swamp with a double lip, the lower flat - T tened the upper inflated and resting upon the lower. One lip was not within H E the other. The next day I went out there and gathered a basketful, certainly G 200 or 300 of the blossoms. They were all in a little patch of tamaracks R south of the R.R. track . .” (unpublished notes written by Livingston to E A Emma Cole in June 1900, Gray Herbarium Archives). T L CYPERACEAE CYPERACEAE A K HEMICARPHA Nees. Lipocarpha micrantha (Vahl) G. C. Tucker ( Hemicarpha subsquarrosa of E 318. H. subsquarrosa Nees. Cole; H. micrantha of Voss); Dwarf-bulrush; 17 Sep 1898 (ALBC); 16 Sep S B H. micrantha (Vahl.) Britton. 1898, 28 Sep 1898, 16 Oct 1898 (MICH). SPECIAL CONCERN. O Wet sandy lake margins; infrequent. July–Oct. T A Bostwick Lake; Silver Lake; Soft Water Lake. N I Plentiful at these stations. S T MAGNOLIACEAE MAGNOLIACEAE LIRIODENDRON L. TULIP-TREE Liriodendron tulipifera L.; Tulip Tree; Skeels s.n., 12 Oct 1895 (ALBC, 556. L. Tulipifera L. MSC). Cole mentions that this species is one of the southern plants that Moist woods; scarce. First of June. reaches its northern limit along the Grand River Valley. She also specifi - Mill Creek woods; Reed’s Lake; Berger Creek; East St. Pinery; West Bridge St. cally mentions it occurring in the Mill Creek woods, which Skeels and Formerly frequent but clearing and draining have made the soil drier, so that Shaddick thoroughly studied. During our inventory of that locality in 2016 there are few young trees at present. for our project we rediscovered Tulip Trees so large that we believe they were growing at the site when Skeels and Shaddick botanized there: Alan Stockdale, Lydia Abma, & Garrett Crow 1078 (CALVIN, MICH, MSC). 9 9 100 THE GREAT LAKES BOTANIST Vol. 56 rounding area to aid in the teaching of botany to her many students at the high school. Emma Cole had access to Nathan Coleman’s (1874) Catalogue of Flowering Plants of the Southern Peninsula of Michigan ––especially significant because it was commissioned and published by the then newly established Kent Scientific Institute in Grand Rapids (as “Miscellaneous Publications, No. 2”). This work was an updating of Winchell’s (1861) catalogue but based on less than two years of fieldwork, mostly conducted in Kent County; the whereabouts of his speci - mens, if they still exist, is unknown (Lammers 2016). Perusal of his Catalogue reveals the work to have been a less than adequate regional account of the flora. And while Cole had the more comprehensive Michigan Flora by Beal and Wheeler (1893) as an invaluable reference to consult, it was state-wide in scope and did not serve her well in her teaching. She had so much more in mind; not only was it her goal to create a detailed floristic account of a rather large, geo - graphical area centered on the City of Grand Rapids, but in addition to the sci - entific names, she also included botanical synonyms and common names and provided information on the general period of blooming, habitat information, specific localities for plants somewhat restricted in occurrence, notes on rarity or vulnerability, and noted the advent of aliens (some of which were first reports for the State). She also included background information regarding the influence of climate on the local flora and the distribution of species (e.g., northern or south - ern species reaching their geographical limits in the Grand Rapids area), and the impact of glacial events in shaping local geomorphology and soils. Furthermore, she gave descriptions of the more ecologically interesting sites within her study “district,” along with lists of species to be found at each such locality. For exam - ples of entries from Cole’s Flora , see Table 1. Enormous changes have taken place within and around Grand Rapids since the horse and buggy days of Emma Cole’s study. Yet, her account published in 1901 for the greater Grand Rapids area remains the most recent comprehensive account of the plants specific to the area. The area covered is 585 square miles consisting of 16 townships of Kent and Ottawa counties centered on the City (Figure 1); also included is ¼ of Vergennes Township (9 sections), an eastern ex - tension to incorporate the area around her family’s country home, where she did extensive collecting. Her collections from “Vergennes” are primarily from 1878 onward, the collecting perhaps stimulated by the botanical training received at Cornell University in 1876–77 and 1878–79 (Stivers 2007). This work is still consulted by those of us with keen interests in ecologically interesting habitats, in the status of rare and endangered plants once known from the area, and in the flora of the region in general. In 2014 David Warners of Calvin College, Bradford Slaughter, then of the Michigan Natural Features In - ventory (now of Orbis Environmental Consulting), and I, having used and greatly appreciated Cole’s Flora , initiated a project centered at the Calvin Col - lege Herbarium to reexamine the flora of the Grand Rapids area with the intent of 1) identifying and accessing specific areas studied by Cole, 2) determining the impact of development on the flora as a whole, 3) reassessing specific localities emphasized by Cole as of significant botanical interest using Floristic Quality Assessments (Reznicek et al. 2014), 4) discovering and inventorying additional 2017 THE GREAT LAKES BOTANIST 101 FIGURE 1. The geographical area covered by Cole’s Grand Rapids Flora prepared by Homer C. Skeels and included in Cole’s Flora .. The four westernmost townships occur in Ottawa County, all others belong to Kent County; 9 Sections of Vergennes Township surround Cole’s family home. ecologically interesting sites within Cole’s “district,” and 5) determining the cur - rent status of the 58 plants listed by Cole and now regarded by the State of Michigan as Endangered (8 taxa), Threatened (31 taxa), or of Special Concern (19 taxa).