Tag Archives: Lost Species Day

Grief and Gardening: Extinct Plants of northern North America 2022

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A Single Candle

As in past years, I’m limiting this list to northern North America for two reasons:

  1. Restricting this list geographically is in keeping with my specialization in plants native to northeastern North America.
  2. There are many more tropical plants, and plant extinctions, than I can manage.

In 2020, this paper:

Vascular plant extinction in the continental United States and Canada

caused me to expand my list from 6 to 59 species, including 7 extinct in the wild. The summary is terse, and grim:

Given the paucity of plant surveys in many areas, particularly prior to European settlement, the actual extinction rate of vascular plants is undoubtedly much higher than indicated here.

Note that they only examined vascular plants. So their list excludes Neomacounia nitida, Macoun’s shining moss. It remains on my full list, below.
I’ve highlighted those which appeared prior to 2020 with an asterisk *. Everything else was added in 2020. If you have additions or corrections to this list, please let me know, and provide a link which I can research.

Extinct

Extinct in the wild (IUCN Red List code EW)

  • Arctostaphylos franciscana, Central Coast, San Francisco County, California. Last observed in the wild 2009
  • Crataegus delawarensis, Delaware, 1903
  • Crataegus fecunda, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, 1930s
  • Crataegus lanuginosa, Webb City, Jasper County, Missouri, 1957
  • Euonymous atropurpurea var. cheatumii, Dallas County, Texas, 1944
  • * Franklinia alatamaha, Franklin Tree
  • Prunus maritima var. gravesii, beach plum, groton, New London County, Connecticut, 2000

Related Content

Links

Vascular plant extinction in the continental United States and Canada, 2020-08-20, Authors: Wesley M. Knapp, Anne Frances, Reed Noss, Robert F. C. Naczi, Alan Weakley, George D. Gann, Bruce G. Baldwin, James Miller, Patrick McIntyre, Brent D. Mishler, Gerry Moore, Richard G. Olmstead, Anna Strong, Kathryn Kennedy, Bonnie Heidel, Daniel Gluesenkamp

Grief and Gardening: Extinct Plants of northern North America 2021

Posted on by
Reply

A Single Candle

As in past years, I’m limiting this list to northern North America for two reasons:

  1. Restricting this list geographically is in keeping with my specialization in plants native to northeastern North America.
  2. There are many more tropical plants, and plant extinctions, than I can manage.

Last year, this paper:

Vascular plant extinction in the continental United States and Canada

caused me to expand my list from 6 to 59 species, including 7 extinct in the wild. The summary is terse, and grim:

Given the paucity of plant surveys in many areas, particularly prior to European settlement, the actual extinction rate of vascular plants is undoubtedly much higher than indicated here.

Note that they only examined vascular plants. So their list excludes Neomacounia nitida, Macoun’s shining moss. It remains on my full list, below.
I’ve highlighted those which appeared prior to 2020 with an asterisk *. Everything else was added in 2020. If you have additions or corrections to this list, please let me know, and provide a link which I can research.

Extinct

Extinct in the wild (IUCN Red List code EW)

  • Arctostaphylos franciscana, Central Coast, San Francisco County, California. Last observed in the wild 2009
  • Crataegus delawarensis, Delaware, 1903
  • Crataegus fecunda, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, 1930s
  • Crataegus lanuginosa, Webb City, Jasper County, Missouri, 1957
  • Euonymous atropurpurea var. cheatumii, Dallas County, Texas, 1944
  • * Franklinia alatamaha, Franklin Tree
  • Prunus maritima var. gravesii, beach plum, groton, New London County, Connecticut, 2000

Related Content

Links

Vascular plant extinction in the continental United States and Canada, 2020-08-20, Authors: Wesley M. Knapp, Anne Frances, Reed Noss, Robert F. C. Naczi, Alan Weakley, George D. Gann, Bruce G. Baldwin, James Miller, Patrick McIntyre, Brent D. Mishler, Gerry Moore, Richard G. Olmstead, Anna Strong, Kathryn Kennedy, Bonnie Heidel, Daniel Gluesenkamp

Extinct Plants of northern North America 2020

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Wanna know what's really scary? Extinction. #ExtinctSymbol #Resist

As in past years, I’m limiting this list to northern North America for two reasons:

  1. Restricting this list geographically is in keeping with my specialization in plants native to northeastern North America.
  2. There are many more tropical plants, and plant extinctions, than I can manage.

In past years, I’ve only been able to find records for 6 plant species that have gone extinct. This year’s list is a major update: 59 extinctions, and 7 extinct in the wild. This is largely due to the research presented in this August 2020 paper:

Vascular plant extinction in the continental United States and Canada

The summary is terse, and grim:

Given the paucity of plant surveys in many areas, particularly prior to European settlement, the actual extinction rate of vascular plants is undoubtedly much higher than indicated here.

Note that they only examined vascular plants. So their list excludes Neomacounia nitida, Macoun’s shining moss. It remains on the full list, below.
Because of the large number of added species, and sun-species taxa, I’ve highlighted those from past years with an asterisk *. Everything else I added this year. If you have additions or corrections to this list, please let me know, and provide a link which I can research.

Extinct

Extinct in the wild (IUCN Red List code EW)

  • Arctostaphylos franciscana, Central Coast, San Francisco County, California. Last observed in the wild 2009
  • Crataegus delawarensis, Delaware, 1903
  • Crataegus fecunda, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, 1930s
  • Crataegus lanuginosa, Webb City, Jasper County, Missouri, 1957
  • Euonymous atropurpurea var. cheatumii, Dallas County, Texas, 1944
  • * Franklinia alatamaha, Franklin Tree
  • Prunus maritima var. gravesii, beach plum, groton, New London County, Connecticut, 2000

Related Content

Links

Vascular plant extinction in the continental United States and Canada, 2020-08-20, Authors: Wesley M. Knapp, Anne Frances, Reed Noss, Robert F. C. Naczi, Alan Weakley, George D. Gann, Bruce G. Baldwin, James Miller, Patrick McIntyre, Brent D. Mishler, Gerry Moore, Richard G. Olmstead, Anna Strong, Kathryn Kennedy, Bonnie Heidel, Daniel Gluesenkamp

Grief and Gardening: Ashes (Remembrance Day for Lost Species)

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Detail, label, "Our Lady of Abundance," inside lid

My alarm wakes me Saturday morning. I go downstairs to the kitchen, nuke myself a cup of coffee, and get a fresh batch going. I didn’t sleep well. Today is the Remembrance Day for Lost Species.


I start prepping my mother’s breakfast. I put some orange juice in her small cup, and add some thickener, probiotic, and her liquid medications. I start working on crushing her morning pills. Each of the half dozen takes a different approach. Some crush easily. Others need to be split first.

Their remains collect in the well of the crusher. The easier ones are reduced to dust. The harder ones leave grit, and small, sharp shards.

A black cat with one spot on her chest, like a priest’s collar, finds me in my garden. She adopts me immediately. I name her “Spot”. She dies in my arms as we try to find the veterinarian emergency room in a snowstorm.

We bring her home in a small tin. Inside the tin is a bag. We transfer it to a reliquary box, an artwork of hammered copper, beads, and glass.

She carries me through 15 years of recovery, reconnecting, and relationship. She comforts the man whom I would later marry through his mother’s dying, and death.

The bag doesn’t quite fit the box. I want to rearrange it. It’s my first time handling cremated remains. I open the bag. Its contents are not what I expect. They are not ash. They are crumbs, and grit, and shards of bone, chalky and white. It’s all that’s left of her.

Tomorrow is World AIDS Day. My partners, my lovers, my friends, my neighbors. I think of the photo one friend took of another, spreading his dead lover’s ashes from a plastic baggie – before he died – on their property in the Catskills. The images of ashes thrown over the White House fence. A sea of quilts, holding the names of my partners, my lovers, my friends, my neighbors, so scattered across the acres of battlefield, it takes hours to visit them all.

We are traveling upstate, our first real vacation together. Everywhere we go the mood is quiet, subdued. Whereever we go, people ask where we’re visiting from. When we tell them, their eyes well up.

I walk to and from work. The streets and gutters are filled with ash. It takes months for the rains to wash it all away.

We step out of the shop. I ask him to wait. I walk back inside. I return to where I saw the box. Its title is “Our Lady of Abundance”. I buy it for the meaning the word has for him. It goes to his apartment, then our apartment, then our home. Waiting.

I am standing in a mountain river, cold over my feet and legs. I am here for my father. I am here with my father. I take the small, ornate bronze container out of my pocket. I open it, and begin releasing its contents to the wind and water. It’s not what you expect: They are not ash. They are crumbs, grit, shards of bone. Tomorrow is the anniversary of his death. It’s all that’s left of him. I am here for my father.

It is Lost Species Day. We are burning the remains of countless organisms. Even long dead, we could not let them be. We are burning the world.

In the Catskills we watched the towers fall, again, and again, a hundred miles away. Where I bought a box of hammered copper, beads, and glass to give to a man to mark a relationship that arose out of deeply shared loss, like a phoenix, from ashes.

Related Content

https://flatbushgardener.blogspot.com/2018/11/extinct-plants-of-northern-north.html
https://flatbushgardener.blogspot.com/2015/11/extinct-plants-of-northern-north.html

Standing Still in 2018

Links

Extinct Plants of northern North America 2018

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I’m limiting this list to northern North America for two reasons:

  1. Restricting this list geographically is in keeping with my specialization in plants native to northeastern North America.
  2. There are many more tropical plants, and plant extinctions, than I can manage; for example, Cuba alone has lost more plant species than I’ve listed on this blog post. 
If you have additions to this list, please let me know, and provide a link which I can research.
  • Astilbe crenatiloba, Roan Mountain false goat’s beard, Roan Mountain, Tennessee, 1885
  • Narthecium montanum, Appalachian Yellow Asphodel, East Flat Rock Bog, Henderson County, North Carolina, before 2004?
  • Neomacounia nitida, Macoun’s shining moss, Belleville, Ontario, 1864
  • Orbexilum macrophyllum, bigleaf scurfpea, Polk County, North Carolina, 1899
  • Orbexilum stipulatum, large-stipule leather-root, Falls-of-the-Ohio scurfpea, Rock Island, Falls of the Ohio, KY, 1881
  • Thismia americana, banded trinity, Lake Calumet, IL, 1916

Extinct in the wild (IUCN Red List code EW)

  • Franklinia alatamaha, Franklin Tree

    • Extinct versus Extirpated

    I often come across misuse of the word “extinct,” as in: native plant extinct in New York City.

    • “Extinct” means globally extinct. No living specimens exist anywhere in the world, not even in cultivation. 
    • “Extirpated” means locally extinct, while the species persists in other populations outside of the study area. To correct the above example: extirpated in New York City. Any regional Flora lists many extirpated species.

    When a species is known only from one original or remaining population, as those listed above were, loss of that population means extinction for the species. In this case, extirpation and extinction are the same thing.

    Another category is “extinct in the wild,” when the species still exists under cultivation, like an animal in a zoo. A famous example of this is Franklinia alatamaha.

    Related Content

    Extinct Plants of northern North America 2015, 2015-11-29
    Extinct Plants of northern North America, 2014-11-30

    Links

    Wikipedia: List of extinct plants: Americas
    IUCN Red List: List of species extinct in the wild
    The Sixth Extinction: Recent Plant Extinctions
    Extinct and Extirpated Plants from Oregon (PDF, 5 pp)

    Extinct Plants of northern North America 2015

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    I’m limiting this list to northern North America for two reasons:

    1. Restricting this list geographically is in keeping with my specialization in plants native to northeastern North America.
    2. There are many more tropical plants, and plant extinctions, than I can manage; for example, Cuba alone has lost more plant species than I’ve listed on this blog post. 
    If you have additions to this list, please let me know, and provide a link which I can research.
    • Astilbe crenatiloba, Roan Mountain false goat’s beard, Roan Mountain, Tennessee, 1885
    • Narthecium montanum, Appalachian Yellow Asphodel, East Flat Rock Bog, Henderson County, North Carolina, before 2004?
    • Neomacounia nitida, Macoun’s shining moss, Belleville, Ontario, 1864
    • Orbexilum macrophyllum, bigleaf scurfpea, Polk County, North Carolina, 1899
    • Orbexilum stipulatum, large-stipule leather-root, Falls-of-the-Ohio scurfpea, Rock Island, Falls of the Ohio, KY, 1881
    • Thismia americana, banded trinity, Lake Calumet, IL, 1916

    Extinct in the wild (IUCN Red List code EW)

  • Franklinia alatamaha, Franklin Tree

    • Extinct versus Extirpated

    I often come across misuse of the word “extinct,” as in: native plant extinct in New York City.

    • “Extinct” means globally extinct. No living specimens exist anywhere in the world, not even in cultivation. 
    • “Extirpated” means locally extinct, while the species persists in other populations outside of the study area. To correct the above example: extirpated in New York City. Any regional Flora lists many extirpated species.

    When a species is known only from one original or remaining population, as those listed above were, loss of that population means extinction for the species. In this case, extirpation and extinction are the same thing.

    Another category is “extinct in the wild,” when the species still exists under cultivation, like an animal in a zoo. A famous example of this is Franklinia alatamaha.

    Related Content

    Extinct Plants of northern North America, 2014-11-30

    Links

    Wikipedia: List of extinct plants: Americas
    IUCN Red List: List of species extinct in the wild
    The Sixth Extinction: Recent Plant Extinctions
    Extinct and Extirpated Plants from Oregon (PDF, 5 pp)

    Extinct Plants of northern North America

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    Reply

    Updated 2014-12-22: Added years of extinction, where known. Started section for Extinct in the Wild (IUCN Red List code EW).

    I’m limiting this list for two reasons:

    1. Restricting this list geographically is in keeping with my specialization in plants native to northeastern North America.
    2. There are many more tropical plants, and plant extinctions, than I can manage; for example, Cuba alone has lost more plant species than I’ve listed on this blog post. 

    If you have additions to this list, please let me know, and provide a link which I can research.

    • Astilbe crenatiloba, Roan Mountain false goat’s beard, Roan Mountain, Tennessee, 1885
    • Narthecium montanum, Appalachian Yellow Asphodel, East Flat Rock Bog, Henderson County, North Carolina, before 2004?
    • Neomacounia nitida, Macoun’s shining moss, Belleville, Ontario, 1864
    • Orbexilum macrophyllum, bigleaf scurfpea, Polk County, North Carolina, 1899
    • Orbexilum stipulatum, large-stipule leather-root, Falls-of-the-Ohio scurfpea, Rock Island, Falls of the Ohio, KY, 1881
    • Thismia americana, banded trinity, Lake Calumet, IL, 1916

    Extinct in the wild

    Extinct versus Extirpated

    I often come across misuse of the word “extinct,” as in: native plant extinct in New York City. “Extinct” means globally extinct. No living specimens exist anywhere in the world, not even in cultivation. “Extirpated” means locally extinct, while the species persists in other populations outside of the study area. To correct the above example: extirpated in New York City. Any regional Flora lists many extirpated species. When a species is known only from one original or remaining population, as those listed above were, loss of that population means extinction for the species. In this case, extirpation and extinction are the same thing. Another category might be “extinct in the wild” when the species still exists under cultivation, like an animal in a zoo. A famous example of this is Franklinia alatamaha.

    Related Content

    Links

    Wikipedia: List of extinct plants: Americas IUCN Red List: List of species extinct in the wild, The Sixth Extinction: Recent Plant Extinctions Extinct and Extirpated Plants from Oregon (PDF, 5 pp)