The flora of Fair River Farm, Lincoln County, Mississippi, U.S.A.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17348/jbrit.v16.i1.1229Abstract
Southwest Mississippi is a poorly studied, but biologically diverse region, encompassing the broad transition from the East Gulf Coastal Plain longleaf pine-bluestem ecosystem to the rich hardwood forests of the Loess bluffs and hills. A floristic inventory of an approximately 694.7-hectare privately owned natural area in Lincoln County was conducted. The Fair River Farm is situated in a region of highly dissected terrain around the Little Fair River and Kees Creek, near the transition between two major level III ecoregions, and the boundary between the Pearl River and lower Mississippi River drainage basins. 744 vascular plant taxa and 72 bryophytes were documented. 495 taxa are new to Lincoln County, and 3 are new to the state of Mississippi; 27 species are designated special concern by the Mississippi Natural Heritage Program, 13 are on the watch list and 14 are on the tracking list. Photographic records available on iNaturalist are used for some species as an alternative to physical vouchers. Plant communities present on the tract are discussed and briefly and qualitatively compared to General Land Office records, original county soil surveys, and historic descriptions of the region, with emphasis on the distribution of longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.), now very rare on the tract. The number of county records highlights the need for more survey work and potentially underreported biological diversity and conservation value of the southwest region of Mississippi and other poorly collected areas of the Southeastern U.S.; this inventory may inform land management decisions on the tract and elsewhere in the region.
References
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WHITE, C.R. & G.L. HARLEY. 2016. Historical fire in longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) forests of south Mississippi and its relation to land use and climate. Ecosphere 7:01458. doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.1458.
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BRAGG, D.C. 2003. Natural presettlement features of the Ashley County, Arkansas area. Amer. Midl. Naturalist 149:1–20.
CANNON, J.B. & J.S. BREWER. 2013. Effects of tornado damage, prescribed fire, and salvage logging on natural oak (Quercus spp.) Regeneration in a xeric southern USA coastal plain oak and pine forest. Natural Areas J. 33(1):39–49. https://doi.org/10.3375/043.033.0105
CHAPMAN, S.S, G.E. GRIFFITH, J.M. OMERNIK, J.A. COMSTOCK, M.C. BEISER, & D. JOHNSON. 2004. Level IV Ecoregions of Mississippi. U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia, U.S.A.
FENNEMAN, N.M. 1938. Physiography of the Eastern United States. McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, U.S.A.
FLORA OF NORTH AMERICA EDITORIAL COMMITTEE, EDS. 1993+. Flora of North America North of Mexico. 12+ vols. New York and Oxford. 23:487–489.
FROST, C.C. 2006. History and future of the longleaf pine ecosystem. In: Jose, S., E. Jokela, D.L. Miller, eds. The longleaf pine ecosystem: Ecology, silviculture, and restoration. Springer Science + Business Media, LLC, New York, U.S.A. Pp. 271–295
GRAY, M.T. 2010. The Use of General Land Office Records and Geographical Information Systems for Restoration of Native Prairie Patches in the Jackson Prairie of Mississippi. Master’s Thesis, Mississippi State University.
GOODMAN, A.L. & E.M. JONES. 1912. Soil Survey of Lincoln County, Mississippi. Bureau of Soils, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington D.C., U.S.A.
GUYETTE, R.P., M.C. STAMBAUGH, D.C. DEY, & R.M. MUZIKA. 2012. Predicting fire frequency with chemistry and climate. Ecosystems 15:322–335 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-011-9512-0.
KEES, J.C. 2018. New combinations, rank changes, and nomenclatural and taxonomic comments in the vascular flora of the southeastern united states. IV. In: Weakley, A.S., B.A. Sorrie, R.J. LeBlond, D.B. Poindexter, A.J. Floden, E.E. Schilling, A.R. Franck, & J.C. Kees. J. Bot. Res. Inst. Tex. 12(2):461–480. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26549476
HILGARD, E.W. 1860. Report on the Geology and Agriculture of the State of Mississippi. E. Barksdale, Jackson, Mississippi.
HANBERRY, B.B., K. COURSEY, J.S. KUSH. 2018. Structure and Composition of Historical Longleaf Pine Ecosystems in Mississippi, USA. Human Ecol. 46:241–248
HAVRAN, J.C. 2004. A preliminary checklist of the vascular flora of the Homochitto National Forest, Mississippi. M.S. Thesis, University of Louisiana at Monroe, Monroe, Louisiana, U.S.A.
HODGKINS, E.J., K.C. TIMOTHY, & W.F. MILLER. 1976. Forest habitat regions from satellite imagery: states of Alabama and Mississippi (poster and descriptive text) Department of Forestry, Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station, Auburn University. Department of Forestry, Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, Mississippi State University, U.S.A.
HOFFMAN, G.H. 1992. Dummy lines through the longleaf: a history of the sawmills and logging railroads of southwest Mississippi. Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi, University, U.S.A.
INATURALIST. 2021. Observations in Kees, J. (admin). 2021. Fair River Institute Biodiversity.
MARIS. 1994. Physiographic Regions. http://www.maris.state.ms.us/HTM/DownloadData/ Statewide-Theme.html.
MCFARLAND, W.J., D. COTTON, M.H. ALFORD, & M.A. DAVIS. 2020. The vascular flora of the Lake Thoreau Environmental Center, Forrest and Lamar counties, Mississippi, with comments on compositional change after a decade of prescribed fire. J. Bot. Res. Inst. Texas 14(2):413–433. https://doi.org/10.17348/ jbrit.v14.i2.1020.
MISSISSIPPI NATURAL HERITAGE PROGRAM [MNHP]. 2006. Ecological communities of Mississippi. Museum of Natural Science, Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks, Jackson, U.S.A.
MISSISSIPPI NATURAL HERITAGE PROGRAM [MNHP]. 2022. Special plants – tracking list. Museum of Natural Science, Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks, Jackson, U.S.A. In prep.
MISSISSIPPI NATURAL HERITAGE PROGRAM [MNHP]. 2022. Special plants – watch list. Museum of Natural Science, Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks, Jackson, U.S.A. In prep.
NOSS, R.F., W.K. PLATT, B.A. SORRIE, A.S. WEAKLEY, D.B. MEANS, J. COSTANZA, & R.K. PEET. 2015. How global biodiversity hotspots may go unrecog-nized: lessons from the North American Coastal Plain. Diversity & Distrib. 21(2):236–244. https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.12278.
NOSS, R.F., J.M. CARTWRIGHT, E. ESTES, T. WITSELL, K.G. ELLIOTT, D.S. ADAMS, M.A. ALBRECHT, R. BOYLES, P.J. COMER, C. DOFFITT, D. FABER-LANGENDOEN, J.G. HILL, W.C. HUNTER, W.M. KNAPP, M. MARSHALL, M. PYNE, J.R. SINGHURST, C. TRACEY, J.L. WALCK, & A.S. WEAKLEY. 2021. Science needs of southeast-ern grassland species of conservation concern: A framework for species status assessments. Open File Report,
PEET, R.K., W.J. PLATT, & J.K. COSTANZA. 2018. Fire-maintained pine savannas and woodlands of the southeastern United States coastal plain. In: Barton, A.M., W.S. Keeton, eds. Ecology and recovery of eastern old-growth forests. Island Press, Washington, DC, U.S.A. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-891-6_3
SOIL SURVEY STAFF. 2021. Soil Survey Geographic Database [SSURGO]. Natural Resources Conservation Service, United States Department of Agriculture. https://sdmdataaccess. sc.egov.usda.gov.
SORRIE, B.A. & A.S. WEAKLEY. 2006. Conservation of the endangered Pinus palustris ecosystem based on Coastal Plain centers of plant ende-mism. Appl. Veg. Sci. 9(1):59–66.
SOUTHEAST REGIONAL NETWORK OF EXPERTISE AND COLLECTIONS [SERNEC]. 2021. Data Portal. https://sernecportal.org/index.php.
WEAKLEY, A.S. 2022. Flora of the southeastern United States. University of North Carolina Herbarium, North Carolina Botanical Garden, Chapel Hill, U.S.A.
WHITE, C.R. & G.L. HARLEY. 2016. Historical fire in longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) forests of south Mississippi and its relation to land use and climate. Ecosphere 7:01458. doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.1458.
UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY [USGS]. (2021). Mississippi Geologic Map Data. https://mrdata.usgs.gov/ geology/state/state.php?state=MS.
UNITED STATES NATIONAL VEGETATION CLASSIFICATION [USNVC]. 2021. United States National Vegetation Classification Database. Federal Geo-graphic Data Committee, Vegetation Subcommittee, Washington D.C. http://usnvc.org/explore-classification/.
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Published
2022-07-15
How to Cite
Kees, J. (2022). The flora of Fair River Farm, Lincoln County, Mississippi, U.S.A. Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, 16(1), 227–254. https://doi.org/10.17348/jbrit.v16.i1.1229
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FLORISTICS, ECOLOGY, & CONSERVATION
