Kiley BriggsViews:
After a recent Wood Turtle survey, a remark I once made to a landowner resurfaced in my mind. I had joked that I wouldn’t recognize an endangered plant if I plucked it from between my toes. I am not a botanist, and it’s easy for small groundcover plants that I’m not familiar with to escape my notice. Thankfully, during an early May survey, we were joined by someone who has a much keener eye for small and unusual plants. To everyone’s surprise, one of her observations that day soon let to the rediscovery of a plant that hadn’t been documented in Vermont in over 100 years: false mermaid weed (Floerkea peroserpinacoides).
Last documented in Vermont in 1916, false mermaid weed was largely assumed to be extirpated from the state. The path to its rediscovery, however, was a circuitous one. While searching for Wood Turtles, Rosy Metcalfe and I were joined by Vermont Fish and Wildlife technician and former Orianne Society technician, Molly Parren. Mid-survey, Molly noticed an unusual species of wild garlic with flat leaves. She took some photos and sent them to the state botanist, Grace Glynn, to verify the plant’s ID. The plant in question turned out to be Canada garlic (Allium canadense), which on its own would have been an important find as it is a threatened species in Vermont. More surprising, however, was what was under the Canada garlic. Grace, it turns out, had spent years trying to find a remnant population of false mermaid weed in Vermont, and there it was, hiding beneath a rare garlic in Molly’s photo.
False mermaid weed is an edible spring ephemeral wildflower with an unusual life history trait. Spring ephemerals grow and blossom early in the year and then the stems and leaves die off by early summer. Most spring ephemerals are perennial plants, such as ramps (wild leeks) and trout lilies. By storing energy in their perennial roots, those plants can spring to life shortly after the snow melts, flower, and seed before forest canopy cover cuts them off from direct sunlight. False mermaid weed, however, is an annual, and needs to grow from seed, flower, and seed again every spring… very quickly. With thin delicate stems, narrow compound leaves with just a few leaflets, and very small whitish or pink flowers, false mermaid weed is a fairly non-descript plant to an untrained eye.
Within days of receiving Molly’s photo, Grace was at the site and quickly confirmed the ID. According to Grace, “We knew of two original sites where false mermaid-weed existed in the 1800s and early 1900s but is absent today. We think the species was lost from those sites perhaps due to development, invasive species, or extreme flood events. So, we’re thrilled to know that false mermaid-weed has persisted along a separate stream all this time.”
Something that surprised Grace nearly as much as the plant’s rediscovery was how abundant the plant was at the site. Patches of false mermaid weed were all over the place, and she’ll need to go back next spring to map out the plant’s distribution more completely. After catching word of this discovery, I combed through my photos from our trip to the site in hopes of finding a picture of Molly photographing the false mermaid weed. Sadly, I did not have photographic evidence of Molly’s moment of discovery. I did, however, find photos that Molly had sent me which included Rosy and I sitting next to the rare plant. Several photos I took of Wood Turtles that day also included a patch of false mermaid weed in the background. Thinking back to my earlier jest to a landowner, I might not have unknowingly plucked a rare plant out from between my toes that day, but I might as well have.
Now that we know what to look out for, we’ll be keeping an eye open for more false mermaid weed during our surveys. While we don’t have any immediate plans to continue surveying in the area where the plant was rediscovered, the habitat and timing that we target our Wood Turtle surveys to is just about perfect for seeing false mermaid weed again somewhere else. Until then, I plan to also do some research about other rare and historic plants we might encounter during our surveys so I am more likely to recognize one if I ever encounter them by chance. With about 2,100 species of plant known in Vermont, roughly 600 of which are rare, I don’t expect to ever recognize every species worth keeping an eye out for, but every new species I learn is one more I stand a chance of recognizing when I see it. The lesson, here, is that you never know what you’ll find in nature, and sometimes even the rarest of species can hide in plain sight.
