Carex of Illinois Beach State Park

Figure 2. Aerial Photo of Dunesland showing Dead River (upper right), industrial lagoon (lower south), and Chicago Northwestern Railway (left) in 1939.

Flowering stems (culms), no whole plants, were collected and photographed with a GPS recording camera during fieldwork in 2010 and 2011 (Appendix A-permit). Inventories of IBSP vouchered specimens were not available from the IDNR, the INPC, or the INAI so Midwest herbaria curators were contacted and their herbaria websites were searched for IBSP specimens. Data was steadily accessed from 12 Midwest herbaria (Table 1). TABLE 1. Herbaria with Dunesland or Illinois Beach State Park specimens

Lab work included scanning fresh culms aside a centimeter ruler, then imaging sheaths and perigynia with a camera mounted bioscope. Floras with identification keys were consulted, as well as comparisons to photographs and images on herbaria websites. As required in the research permits (Appendix A), the Illinois specimens were sent to curated herbaria: Dr. Andrew Hipp at the Morton Arboretum (MOR), Dr. Hong Qian at the Illinois State Museum (ISM), and to Dr. Rick Phillippe of Illinois Natural History Survey Herbarium (ILLS). Wisconsin specimens were sent to Ted Cochrane and Mark Wetter at the UW-Madison Herbarium and Dr. Sara Hoot at the UW-Milwaukee Herbarium. Images of Wisconsin specimens from Chiwaukee Prairie adjoining IBSP were sent to Robert Freckmann Herbarium website, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

RESULTS

Topographic maps and spatial analysis revealed the Illinois Beach State Park has nearly as much area of sand prairie as the Savanna Army Depot, the largest in the state. However, the moisture regimes differ. The corrugated topography of IBSP includes prairies that grade into ridges and swales that the Army Depot lacked. Most of the prairie below the Holocene Ridge parallels marshy swales, sedge meadows and wet prairie with ponds. Mesic prairies and oak savannas on ridges merged into dry sand prairies. A newer habitat, a swamp forest, receives Bull Creek’s flow into the IBSP. The1864 Benton Township map shows one of the inflowing tributaries of Bull Creek began in a property of 160 acres owned by Ich. Bull. The creek flowed east under the railway into marshland and looped south into the Dead River watershed. The 1939 aerial photograph shows trees lining the creek that appeared to flow due east. Access into the Dunesland in 1939 was Beach Road to the South, and 21st to the North. By 1974 Wadsworth Road was constructed as the single entry and cut straight east through the marsh to the beach. The original Dead Lake, drawn in the 1864 map, was drained, but a near-by sand borrow is the new “Dead Lake” on recent maps. (Wiki Central 2012). In the 1990’s, Wadsworth Road entry was restructured to send traffic south in a loop that joined the older Beach Road, but kept the straight east road as the Campground entry. Two borrow ponds were created, S pond near the entrance and Campground Pond. In the 2010 aerial, Bull Creek has a first-growth swamp forest of Acer saccharinum (silver maple), Fraxinus pennsylvanica (green ash), Acer negundo (box elder), and Populus deltoides (eastern cottonwood). Bull Creek formed an oxbow and flowed south into ponds and then filtered into the Dead River Watershed. No stumps from previous woodlands were noted during fieldwork. Severe winds uprooted thousands of trees on July 1, 2011 east to west, and again on July 11th with west to east tree-fall. The South Unit of IBSP was closed to the public and researchers. Four new species that were non-vouchered and non-inventoried were discovered in the first-growth Bull Creek swamp forest in 2011. They are: C. cristatella, C. grisea, C. molesta, and C. sparganioides.. One culm of C. viridula, a threatened species in Illinois, was sent to the Illinois State Museum. A Sighting Report was sent to IDNR-Illinois Natural Heritage Database giving its locations. Other E & T species were the threatened C. aurea, and endangered C. garberi reported to grow with C. conoidea, C. crawei, and C. tetanica. The associates in sedge meadows were C. lasiocarpa, C. pellita, C. buxbaumii, C. sterilis, and C. stipata. C. granularis var. haleana grew along Sand Lake, a borrow, in Camp Logan. Tussocks of C. stricta and the newly discovered C. interior grew along the marshy edges of the floodplain behind the Nature Center. C. annectens var xanthocarpa, a new species, grew in a crevice of the IBSP Nature Center parking lot. Weed-whacked before mature in 2011, the plant survived with culms and mature seed heads in 2012. In early literature, F.C. Gates listed 16 Carex species as part of his University of Illinois graduate research and later published Vegetation of the Beach Area (1912) (Table 2). Gates’ specimen of C. aurea is now annotated and filed as C. garberi at the Field Museum. Gates added a bog sedge, C. trisperma, without a collection number to his 1912 article list as collected by Dr. H. A. Gleason. Of the two specimens collected by Gleason, one is now at MICH and another at ILLS, both inland from Lake Villa, Illinois, which has Gavin Bog in Grant Forest Preserve and another at IDNR’s Cedar Lake Bog. Neither specimen was collected during 1907-09. Verne Graham’s C. trisperma was labeled as located in a Sphagnum bog 3 miles east of Antioch. Table 2. Carex collected by F. C. Gates (1912)

Field Museum Herbarium, (F), University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Herbarium (MICH), Illinois Natural History Survey (ILLS), and University of Illinois (ILL) Gates collections are in three herbaria. Specimen 3027, dated 7-16- 1909, C. lasiocarpa = filiformis is at MICH and were annotated as C. lasiocarpa in 1998 by Dr. Anton Reznicek from the University of Michigan Herbarium. Dr. Reznicek also annotated specimens at the Chicago Field Museum Herbarium for the vPlants Project in 2002. One sheet labeled C. filiformis had two different species, C. pellita and C. lanuginosa. Another change, Gate’s C. riparia 2498 at U-Michigan herbarium was annotated as C. aquatilis var. substricta while another labeled C. riparia 2786 was annotated as C. lacustris at the Chicago Field Museum Herbarium (Table 3). The earliest literature describing Lake Michigan Dunesland was by pioneer ecologist Cowles (1899) who collected plants primarily from the Indiana Dunes, collected the first specimen of C. aurea from the Illinois Dunesland on 8-13-1910. (ISM 3513) . Table 3. Carex Species at Field Museum of Dunesland in Lake County Illinois (cniezgoda@fieldmuseum.org) Pepoon (1927) wrote of the Dunesland of Indiana and collected C. lupuliformis from the Glenwood Beach and C. hystericina in the reed swamp nearest the beach in Lake County, Indiana and Cook County, Illinois, none in Lake County, Illinois. Dunes Park, Illinois was changed to Beach Park to avoid confusion with Indiana’s Dunes Park, Lake County. Another early collector, L.M. Umbach, a professor at Northwestern University in Naperville, collected in Lake County, Illinois, but also the Indiana Dunes in Lake County, Indiana, and Cook County, Illinois along the Lake Michigan coast (Table 4). Table 4. Carex collected by L. M. Umbach, Lake County, Illinois 1908-1912 Umbach collected 14 species, many with duplicates, in Lake County, Illinois from 1908- 1912 during the same period as F.C. Gates. Although Gates had collected on ten dates for his graduate research, Umbach’s collection dates were different from Gates’, except 7- 01-1908 when Umbach had collected a C. buxbaumii, C. hystericina, and C. viridula while Gates collected C. hystericina, and C. lacustris. Recently discovered, Umbach’s herbarium sheet of C. polygama had two different species, C. buxbaumii and C. pellita. These were separated and given new 5 digit accession numbers by Ted Cochrane and Mark Wetter at the U-Wisconsin herbarium. C. houghtonii and a C. filiformis were annotated C. lanuginosa that is now C. pellita. Dr. Elizabeth Lunn, author of Plants of the Illinois Dunesland (1982) collected 17 Carex from the IBSP for the Lake Forest College herbarium but did not include them in her book (Table 5). I compared those specimens in 1975 to Carex species collected for my 1974 Master’s Thesis on the Benedict Prairie, an inland clay soil prairie in Kenosha County, Wisconsin (Curtis 1974). Dr. James Zimmerman (WIS) confirmed the seven Benedict Prairie Carices except C. bicknellii, and that was annotated as C. molesta. Table 5. IBSP Carex at Lake Forest College Herbarium (ETL) (jonesva@mx.lakeforest.edu) Dr. Zimmerman (WIS) gave determinations of Dr. Lunn’s LFC specimens in 1967: C. bebbii, C. comosa, C. conoidea, C. lanuginosa, C. meadii, C. muehlenbergii, C. penysylvanica, and C. viridula. Determinations by Floyd Swink (MOR) in 1969 were C. blanda, C. comosa, C. davisii, C. muehlenbergii and C. viridula. Dr. Gerould Wilhelm annotated the specimens on 1-24-2013. C. davisii was C. granularis. C. stricta was C. stipata, and a C. tetanica and a C. meadii were C. crawei. C. lanuginosa is C. pellita. Swink and Wilhelm’s Plants of the Chicago Region (1994) had 16 Carex species with reference to the Illinois Dunes in Lake County, Illinois. Floyd Swink collected ten Carices (Table 6) while Gerould Wilhelm collected C. richardsonii and C. tonsa in 1986. Marlin Bowles, also Morton Arboretum, collected Carices at IBSP in 1987-8 (Table 7). Table 6. IBSP Carex collected by Floyd Swink, Morton Arboretum 1960-2000 The list of Carex collected from the IBSP includes species that were renamed, some several times, an indication of the difficulty of Carex identification, but also taxonomic changes. C. heliophila was originally C. pensylvanica when collected by Swink 7-8- 1947, but was changed to var. digyna by Wilhelm 2-15-1992. Jason Sturner annotated it C. inops ssp. heliophila on 12-21-2006. In Flora of Illinois: Carex, the variety now is a species: C. helophilia and C. granularis var. heleana is C. heleana (Mohlenbrock 2011). Table 7. IBSP Carex collected by Marlin Bowles (mbowles@mortonarb.org) The Chicago Botanic Garden conducts a rare plant monitoring program, Plants of Concern (POC), which includes northeastern Illinois, southeastern Wisconsin DNR (includes the Chiwaukee Prairie) and northwestern Indiana. In addition, the Millennium Seed Bank Project (MSBP) for which some of the above specimens were collected, records data about plants in nature preserves and public lands (Table 8). Table 8. IBSP Carex at Chicago Botanic Garden Herbarium (nzerega@chicagobotanic.org) Sigmund Graenicher (1855-1937) was a Harvard College Botanist that collected in SE Wisconsin and the Waukegan Dunesland (Table 9). Table 9. Dunesland Carex: Milwaukee Public Museum Herbarium (nluebke@mpm.edu) Robert Kral, professor at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee collected eight species from a swale along the railway in 1973 (Table 10). All were deposited at the Missouri Botanical Garden Herbarium. One specimen, C. vaginata 50363, was determined as C. tetanica (Table 10). Mohlenbrock’s Flora of Illinois: Carex 2nd ed. (2011) described C. vaginata, a northern species, as only at the Illinois Beach State Park. The European C. panicea was an early name in the U.S. for C. tetanica. Kral also collected a species not known in the Midwest, C. multimoda, now C. pachystachys, that has distinctive metallic scales.That species will be determined by Anton Reznicek. Keying errors are continual problems in identification. Robust specimens of C. tetanica were often indistinct from the dimensions of C. meadii. While C. brevior is common at IBSP, Chiwaukee Prairie and Waukegan Dunes, similar C. bicknellii has not been noted in sampling data nor collected, although it was recorded in Spring Bluff’s inventory. Table 10. IBSP Carex collected by Kral 5-31-1973 at Missouri Botanical Garden Herbarium (George.yatskievych@mobot.org) Collection Notes: (1) refer to Swink & Wilhelm, 1994. W = evaluation c for wetland. preference. Dr. Anton Reznicek has determined Kral’s C. panicea and C. vaginata are C. tetanica. Field identification of fresh Carex during plot sampling is problematic. Usually culms are taken for a later bioscope examination, then pressed and dried for mounting on a herbarium sheet, then compared to other dried specimens. Fresh images with 10-20 magnification from camera-mounted bioscopes are helpful for field workers. Veins, also known as nerves, form diagnostic patterns on perigynia and sheaths. Texture differences such as the tiny bumps known as papilla versus smooth surfaces distinguish some species, such as the papillate sheaths of C. muehlenbergii. Two websites with photographs of Carex are Illinois Wildflowers and University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, Robert Freckmann Herbarium website. Taxanomic names vary and C. abdita on the Illinois Wildflowers website is C. umbellata on Wisconsin’s Robert Freckmann Herbarium Website. C. annectens var. xanthocarpa in Wisconsin is C. brachyglossa in Illinois, which uses Flora of Illinois: Carex (Mohlelnbrock 2011). The Illinois Natural Areas Inventory (INAI) lists the plants in high quality natural areas, especially those with endangered species. Begun in 1975, it is maintained by IDNR. In 1976, INAI found ten Carices at the Illinois Beach State Park in their 0.25m sq. circular sampling plots (Table 11). The INAI classified prairie habitats as dry sand prairies if no dark A horizon soil was present, similar to sand dunes, while dry mesic prairies had dark A horizon soil. No Carex species were found on the beach or foredunes. Carices in dry sand prairie were C. pensylvanica, C. umbellata and C. meadii. The dry mesic prairie had C. pensylvanica while C. buxbaumii and C. aquatilis were noted in the wet sand prairie. Species in the panne were C. viridula, C. lasiocarpa and C. pellita. On the ridges with oak savanna were C. pensylvanica and C. muehlenbergii. Sedge meadows had C. buxbaumii, C. stricta, C. pellita, C. lasiocarpa, and C. spp. In the wetlands, C. lasiocarpa also grew in marshes with Typha sp. and other marshes with Scirpus validus. No Carices were noted at the seep with Betula papyrifera. The Illinois Natural Areas Inventory database of IBSP (IDNR 2012) has 16 Carex species from Gates’ list (1912) with the INAI sampling data from 1976, 1997, and 2010. The total was 20 IBSP species, 11 Spring Bluff only, and totaled 31 species (Table 11). Table 11. Carex of Illinois Natural Areas Inventories (INAI) of IBSP and Spring Bluff

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

HERBARIA

 

LITERATURE AND WEB-SITES

 

APPENDIX A

A Illinois Nature Preserves Collecting Permit Permit obtained from Kelly Neal at: Kelly.Neal@Illinois.gov 6-6-2010 “INPC typically does not allow collections within nature preserves. If you are only collecting culms, INPC will allow collection of up to 3 culms with the following conditions: 1. The species has not been collected previously at the site and placed in a curated collection-you are required to check major collections. 2. The species is not listed as threatened or endangered. 3. Collection represents no more than 20% of the population (i.e., there must be at least fifteen culms present for that species before you can collect). 4. The collections must be placed in a curated collection such as the Natural History Survey or Field Museum. 5. Please refer to the below excerpt from the IL Administrative Code, Management of Nature Preserves for additional information on collecting in nature preserves. Also, when onsite, be sure to minimize trampling and disturbances to sensitive plant communities. Every effort should be made to prevent the spread of exotic or invasive plants/plant propagules at the site, including cleaning shoes, pant cuffs, equipment, etc. before moving on after being in areas containing invasive plants. APPENDIX B

copyright © 2014 Linda Curtis, botanist

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