The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Honors Theses Honors College Spring 5-2019 Checklist of the Vascular Flora, Restoration Plans, and Educational Interpretive Signs for a Remnant Prairie at the Lakewood Memorial Cemetery, Hinds County, Mississippi Olivia Shelton University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/honors_theses Part of the Botany Commons Recommended Citation Shelton, Olivia, "Checklist of the Vascular Flora, Restoration Plans, and Educational Interpretive Signs for a Remnant Prairie at the Lakewood Memorial Cemetery, Hinds County, Mississippi" (2019). Honors Theses. 633. https://aquila.usm.edu/honors_theses/633 This Honors College Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors College at The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The University of Southern Mississippi Checklist of the vascular flora, restoration plans, and educational interpretive signs for a remnant prairie at the Lakewood Memorial Cemetery, Hinds County, Mississippi by Olivia Shelton A Thesis Submitted to the Honors College of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of Honors Requirements May 2019 ii Approved by _________________________________ Dr. Mac H. Alford, Ph.D. Thesis Adviser Professor of Biological Sciences _________________________________ Dr. Jake Schaefer, Ph.D., Director School of Biological, Environmental, and Earth Sciences _________________________________ Dr. Ellen Weinauer, Ph.D., Dean Honors College iii Abstract A floristic survey was conducted on the eastern margin of the Lakewood Memorial Park Cemetery, located between Jackson and Clinton, Mississippi, near the western edge of the Jackson Prairie ecoregion. From soil map data and preliminary observations of the landform and flora, the eastern part of the cemetery was hypothesized to be remnant prairie now mostly covered by exotic grasses (pasture) and woodland. Plant specimens were collected, identified, and preserved in the herbarium of The University of Southern Mississippi (USMS). The survey yielded 119 species of vascular plants, of which 98 (82%) were native and 21 (18%) were non- native. Indicative prairie plants included Anemone caroliniana (carolina anemone), Asclepias virdiflora (green milkweed), Echinacea purpurea (purple coneflower), Rudbeckia hirta (black- eyed susan), and Sorghastrum nutans (indian grass), and some of the associated woodland had rare species such as Carya myristiciformis (nutmeg hickory). Plants with a historical medical significance were also noted. Due to the scarcity of prairies in Mississippi, the landowners were petitioned to restore the prairie by burning and removal of non-native shrubs and trees and to place an educational interpretive sign about the prairies and the Jackson Prairie, in particular. Key Words: grasslands, Jackson Prairie, medicinal plants, prairie, prairie restoration iv Dedication This thesis is dedicated to Velda O. Moore. v Acknowledgments Thanks to Dr. Mac Alford for his constant support and encouragement and assistance with identification. Thanks to Bobby Harrell and the staff at Lakewood Memorial Cemetery for allowing us to study part of their property and to collect voucher specimens of plants found there. Thanks to Matt Smith and Heather Sullivan of the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science for providing information on putative remnant prairie sites in the Jackson area, Dr. Brian Keener of the University of West Alabama for help in the identification of Sisyrinchium (Iridaceae), Marc Pastorek (Pastorek Habitats LLC) for discussions of seed banks and prairie restoration, Dr. Dwayne Estes of Austin Peay State University for visiting USM and discussing grasslands of the Southeast, Joshua Wilkinson, Will McFarland, Stefan Alford, and Nikola Alford for assistance in collecting, and Daniel McNair for preparing the map of the Jackson Prairie and Black Belt. Thanks to the Drapeau Center for Undergraduate Research and the Eagle Scholars Program for Undergraduate Research (Eagle SPUR) for funding. Thanks to the Honors College for this opportunity, and to all my friends and family for their constant support. vi Table of Contents List of Tables ................................................................................................................... viii List of Figures .................................................................................................................... ix List of Abbreviations ...........................................................................................................x Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................1 Chapter 2: Literature Review ...............................................................................................6 2.1 Site History ...............................................................................................................6 2.2 Climate and Weather Patterns .................................................................................7 2.3 Grasslands and Prairies ..........................................................................................8 2.4 Soils ..........................................................................................................................8 2.5 Standards for Flora ..................................................................................................9 Chapter 3: Materials and Methods ....................................................................................10 3.1 Collection and Preservation ..................................................................................10 Chapter 4: Checklist of the Vascular Flora .......................................................................12 Chapter 5: Discussion .......................................................................................................21 5.1 Prairie Verification ................................................................................................21 5.2 Species Analysis .....................................................................................................22 5.3 Future Restoration Plans .......................................................................................23 Chapter 6: Interpretive Signs for Medicinally Significant Plants .....................................25 Literature Cited .................................................................................................................30 vii List of Tables Table 1. Number of native and non-native species found in each taxonomic group. viii List of Figures Figure 1. Map of the Jackson Prairie and Black Belt (prepared by Daniel McNair). Figure 2. Satellite view of site (acme.com), with major collecting areas marked in red. Centered around Latitude/Longitude N 32.33803 W90.28729. Note the sparse woodland (putative remnant prairie) near Markers A and B. Figure 3. Map of prairie soils found near Jackson, Mississippi (provided by Matt Smith). The broad open area near the center is the Pearl River basin. The cemetery site is marked by a yellow star. Figure 4. Photo of remnant prairie site at Lakewood Memorial Park. Notice the evergreen Juniperus virginiana (Eastern Redcedar), a species commonly associated with prairie woodland. Figure 5. Photo of remnant prairie site at Lakewood Memorial Park showing Anemone caroliniana (center, white) and Claytonia virginica (common, pink) flowers (photo by Dr. Mac Alford). Figure 6. Echinacea purpurea illustration. Figure 7. Rudbeckia hirta illustration. Figure 8. Arundinaria gigantea illustration. Figure 9. Juniperus virginiana illustration. Figure 10. Asclepias viridiflora illustration. ix List of Abbreviations ASB = Association of Southeastern Biologists MMNS = Official acronym for the herbarium of the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science (from Index Herbariorum, Thiers, 2019) MNHP = Mississippi Natural Heritage Program NCRS = National Resources Conservation Service NSF = National Science Foundation Pers. Comm. = personal communication SABS = Southern Appalachian Botanical Society SERNEC = Southeast Regional Network of Expertise and Collections USDA = United States Department of Agriculture USM = The University of Southern Mississippi USMS = Official acronym for the herbarium of The University of Southern Mississippi (from Index Herbariorum, Thiers, 2019) x Chapter 1: Introduction The plants of a specific area are known as a flora. Surveys of floras, or compiling a list of species in an area, are conducted for a variety of reasons, ranging from the search for a specific species, to the desire to better understand co-occurring species in plant communities, to the intention to provide a client with a list of the species present and gain a sense of a locality’s biodiversity. Mississippi has one of the least adequately known floras in the United States (Duncan, 1953; Bryson & Carter, 1996; Sorrie & Leonard, 1999; Majure, 2008), but a grant recently funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation to each of Mississippi’s plant collections (herbaria) has given the state an opportunity to revisit a draft checklist of plant species and to put images and data online for easier study (Mississippi Herbarium Consortium 2013; NSF 2018). A floristic survey was undertaken to gain insight into an area recently