National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior Natural Resource Program Center Annotated Checklist of Vascular Flora Canyonlands National Park Natural Resource Technical Report NPS/NCPN/NRTR—2009/221 ON THE COVER View of the Colorado River and White Rim from Island in the Sky, Canyonlands National Park, Utah. Photograph by Walter Fertig. Annotated Checklist of Vascular Flora Canyonlands National Park Natural Resource Technical Report NPS/NCPN/NRTR—2009/221 Authors Walter Fertig Moenave Botanical Consulting 1117 W. Grand Canyon Dr. Kanab, UT 84741 Sarah Topp Northern Colorado Plateau Network National Park Service P.O. Box 848 Moab, UT 84532 Mary Moran Southeast Utah Group National Park Service P.O. Box 907 Moab, UT 84532 Editing and Design Alice Wondrak Biel Northern Colorado Plateau Network National Park Service P.O. Box 848 Moab, UT 84532 June 2009 U.S. Department of the Interior National Park Service Natural Resource Program Center Fort Collins, Colorado The National Park Service, Natural Resource Program Center publishes a range of reports that ad- dress natural resource topics of interest and applicability to a broad audience in the National Park Ser- vice and others in natural resource management, including scientists, conservation and environmental constituencies, and the public. The Natural Resource Technical Report Series is used to disseminate results of scientifi c studies in the physical, biological, and social sciences for both the advancement of science and the achievement of the National Park Service mission. The series provides contributors with a forum for displaying com- prehensive data that are often deleted from journals because of page limitations. All manuscripts in the series receive the appropriate level of peer review to ensure that the information is scientifi cally credible, technically accurate, appropriately written for the intended audience, and de- signed and published in a professional manner. This report received informal peer review by subject- matter experts who were not directly involved in the collection, analysis, or reporting of the data. Views, statements, fi ndings, conclusions, recommendations, and data in this report are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily refl ect views and policies of the National Park Service, U.S. Depart- ment of the Interior. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorse- ment or recommendation for use by the National Park Service. This report is available from the Northern Colorado Plateau Network website, http://www.nature. nps.gov/im/units/NCPN, as well as at the Natural Resource Publications Management web site, http:// www.nature.nps.gov/publications/NRPM. Please cite this publication as: Fertig, W., S. Topp, and M. Moran. 2009. Annotated checklist of vascular fl ora: Canyonlands National Park. Natural Resource Technical Report NPS/NCPN/NRTR—2009/221. National Park Service, Fort Collins, Colorado. NPS 100066, June 2009 ii Annotated Checklist of Vascular Flora: Canyonlands National Park Contents Figures ...........................................................................................................................................v Tables .............................................................................................................................................v Abstract .......................................................................................................................................vii Acknowledgements .....................................................................................................................ix 1 Introduction .............................................................................................................................1 1.1 Background and justifi cation .......................................................................................................1 1.2 Objectives ......................................................................................................................................1 1.3 Study area .....................................................................................................................................1 1.3.1 History and setting ........................................................................................................................ 1 1.3.2 Geology ......................................................................................................................................... 2 1.3.3 Vegetation ..................................................................................................................................... 2 1.3.4 Previous botanical studies ............................................................................................................ 4 2 Methods .....................................................................................................................................7 3 Results ........................................................................................................................................9 3.1 Summary of the fl ora of Canyonlands National Park ................................................................9 3.2 Life form and biogeographic diversity ......................................................................................10 3.3 Plants of special concern ............................................................................................................10 3.4 Non-native species and noxious weeds .....................................................................................11 4 Discussion ................................................................................................................................15 5 Literature Cited .......................................................................................................................17 Appendices ..................................................................................................................................21 Appendix A. Confi rmed, historical, and reported vascular plant taxa of Canyonlands National Park, organized by family and scientifi c name with taxonomic and biogeographic notes. ........23 Appendix B. Potential (unconfi rmed) taxa of Canyonlands National Park ...................................82 Appendix C. Rejected (falsely reported or questionable) taxa of Canyonlands National Park. ...90 Appendix D. Confi rmed, historical, and reported taxa of Canyonlands National Park, organized by life form with ecological notes. ...............................................................................100 Contents iii Figures Figure 1.3.1. Location of Canyonlands National Park, Grand, Garfi eld, San Juan, and Wayne counties, Utah. ....................................................................................................................................................... 3 Figure 1.3.4. Increase in the number of plant taxa confi rmed as present in Canyonlands National Park, 1960–2007. ............................................................................................................................................. 6 Tables Table 1.3.4. Chronology of plant-collecting efforts in Canyonlands National Park. ........................................ 5 Table 3.1. Statistical summary of the fl ora of Canyonlands National Park. ...................................................... 9 Table 3.3. Plant species of conservation concern from Canyonlands National Park....................................... 11 Table 3.4. Noxious weed species of Canyonlands National Park. .................................................................... 14 Contents v Abstract In 2005–2006, the National Park Service’s Northern Colorado Plateau Network received funding to develop a revised checklist of the vascular plant fl ora of Canyonlands National Park. This entailed a thorough review of existing literature, re-examination of specimens from the Canyonlands National Park herbarium and other state and national museum collections, and additional fi eld work to corrob- orate unverifi ed species reports or locate new species. Based on this study, 594 vascular plant taxa have been confi rmed or reliably reported as occuring in the park (534 are known from validated herbarium specimens and 60 from unvouchered literature reports). Another 100 species formerly considered part of the park fl ora have now been shown to be falsely reported. The current fl ora of Canyonlands National Park represents 16.5% of the known fl ora of Utah, and 35.1% of the fl ora of the Colorado Plateau ecoregion within Utah. At least 45 of these species are either listed as sensitive by various agen- cies or considered species of concern by the state natural heritage program. Introduced plants make up 11.4% of the park fl ora (68 species), of which only seven species are considered noxious weeds by the State of Utah. Further surveys in Canyonlands National Park are likely to fi nd additional new species (at least 161 are known from similar habitats outside the park boundary), especially among late-fl owering, weedy, or wetland taxa. Contents vii Acknowledgements We would like to thank the following individuals for their assistance with this project: Dr. Angela Evenden, botanist and former leader of the Northern Colorado Plateau Network (NCPN) program in Moab, Utah, was an active proponent of this project and helped secure funding for fi eld work and herbarium studies in 2006. Vicki Webster, curator of museum collections for the National