Atlas of the flora of New England: Dicots - Caryophyllidae: Introduction

ABSTRACT. Dot maps are provided to depict the distribution at the county level of the taxa of Caryophillidae growing outside of cultivation in the six New England states of the northeastern United States. Of the 263 taxa treated (species, subspecies, varieties, and hybrids, but not forms), 261 are mapped based primarily on specimens in major herbaria of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, with most data derived from the holdings of the New England Botanical Club Herbarium (NEBC). Brief synonymy to account for names used in standard manuals and floras for the area, habitat and chromosome information, and common names are also provided.

Key Words: flora, New England, atlas, distribution, Caryophyllidae.

This article is the eighth in a series (Angelo and Boufford, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2007, 2010, 2011a, 2011b) that will present the distributions of the vascular flora of New England in the form of dot distribution maps at the county level (see Key Map). The atlas is posted on the internet at http://neatlas.org/ where it will be updated as new information becomes available.

This project encompasses all vascular plants (pteridophytes and spermatophytes) at the rank of species, subspecies, and variety growing independent of cultivation in the six New England states. Hybrids are also included, but forms and other ranks below the level of variety are not. The dots are based on voucher specimens primarily in New England herbaria (of colleges, universities, botanical gardens, and public museums) representing reproducing populations outside of cultivated habitats. This eighth installment includes the families in subclass Caryophyllidae. For convenience, these are the families treated in Flora of North America, Volumes 4 and 5 (Flora of North America Editorial Committee 2003, 2005). Of the 263 taxa treated, 169 found here, a surprising 64 percent, are not native to the region. Future accounts will treat the distribution of additional non-monocot angiosperms.

The habitat data are distillations from a variety of sources augmented by our own field observations. An attempt was made to indicate habitat information as it applies to a particular taxon in New England rather than to the entire range of the taxon. Such information is omitted where habitat is not indicated on the specimen label and where we also lack personal knowledge of the plant in New England. Omissions of habitat information are for a few introduced taxa and for all hybrids.

It is our hope that these articles will stimulate additional field work to supplement the distributions portrayed in the maps. The New England Botanical Club herbarium has proven to be the most important resource for this project. We are eager to receive information on voucher specimens in public herbaria documenting range extensions and filling county gaps in distributions. Similarly, because the atlas of the New England flora will be continuously updated as new information becomes available, we are eager to receive notification of published corrections of cytological information and new, documented chromosome counts for taxa in the New England flora.

Materials and methods are as outlined in Angelo and Boufford (1996) and are not repeated here. This can also be found at http://neatlas.org/Intro-Pterid&Gym.html.

TAXONOMY AND FORMAT

The taxonomy and nomenclature adopted for this work essentially follow that of the Flora of North America project in progress, except that families, genera, and species are arranged alphabetically. The families and their circumscription do not necessarily reflect current views on relationships or composition. The Angiosperm Phylogeny Website (Stevens 2001 onwards) should be consulted for a continuously updated treatment of families and their inclusive genera. Named and unnamed hybrid taxa are placed alphabetically at the end of the genus in which they occur. Unnamed hybrids combine the names of the progenitors alphabetically by epithet. Taxa that are not native to New England are indicated by uppercase text. Unpublished names are not used, even if publication is pending.

Chromosome numbers are taken from Flora of North America, Volumes 4 and 5 (Flora of North America Editorial Committee 2003, 2005) and from Missouri Botanical Garden's Index to Plant Chromosome Numbers [website http://www.tropicos.org/NameSearch.aspx?projectid=9; St. Louis, MO]

Synonymy is provided primarily with respect to names accepted in standard manuals covering New England published from 1950 onward, including Fernald (1950), Gleason and Cronquist (1991), and Seymour (1982). Synonyms have not been provided where the distribution for the synonymized name does not include New England.

The following list (which includes excluded taxa) will aid readers in finding familiar names that have been transferred to other taxa:

Acnida => Amaranthus

Arenaria (in part) => Honckenya

Arenaria (in part) => Minuartia

Arenaria (in part) => Moehringia

Atocion => Silene

Bassia (in part) => Kochia

Chenopodium (in part) => Dysphania

Eudianthe => Silene

Lychnis => Silene

Montia (in part) => Claytonia

Polygonum (in part) => Bistorta

Polygonum (in part) => Fallopia

Polygonum (in part) => Persicaria

Salicornia (in part) => Sarcocornia

Saponaria (in part) => Vaccaria

Silene (in part) => Saponaria

Stellaria (in part) => Myosoton

Talinum => Phemeranthus

The following species are reported from our area, but no voucher specimens were located, or the substantiating specimens were misidentified, or the voucher specimen is in question, or the taxa were excluded for other reasons noted:

Amaranthus dubius Martius ex Thellung [no specimen located; reported from Massachusetts at a boat landing in Ann. Missouri Bot. Garden. 37:607 (1950) by J. D. Sauer, but no specimen cited]

Atriplex heterosperma Bunge [no specimen located; reported from Maine in Flora of North America Editorial Committee (2003)]

Atriplex pentandra (Jacquin) Standley [no specimen located; reported from Massachusetts and Connecticut in Flora of North America Editorial Committee (2003), but possibly these reports are for the very closely related Atriplex mucronata Rafinesque]

Atriplex sibirica Linnaeus [no specimen located; reported from Worcester Co., Massachusetts in Rhodora 71:580 (1969)]

Cerastium diffusum Persoon [no specimen located; cited by Sorrie and Somers (Sorrie & Somers 1999) from Middlesex Co., Massachusetts, but voucher not located by us, nor later by Sorrie (Sorrie 2005)]

Cerastium velutinum Rafinesque var. velutinum [no specimen located; reported from Massachusetts in Flora of North America Editorial Committee (2005)]

Chenopodium desiccatum A. Nelson [no specimen located; reported from several New England states under the synonym C. pratericola Rydberg var. oblongifolium (S. Watson) Wahl, but if vouchers exist, they are probably misidentifications of typical C. pratericola]

Chenopodium opulifolium Schrader ex W. D. J. koch & Ziz [no specimen located; reported from Massachusetts and Rhode Island in early 20th century literature]

Chenopodium watsonii A. Nelson [no specimen located; reported from York Co., Maine]

Claytonia sibirica Linnaeus [The voucher specimen collected from a residential yard from Essex Co., Massachusetts is not accepted as evidence for establishment in the wild.]

Corispermum americanum (Nuttall) Nuttall var. americanum [no specimen located; reported from Massachusetts]

Corrigiola litoralis Linnaeus subsp. litoralis [no specimen located and deemed not established in the wild; reported from Massachusetts as a garden weed (Sorrie 2005)]

Froelichia arizonica Thornber ex Standley [The voucher specimen from Suffolk Co., Massachusetts has been reidentified as Froelichia gracilis (Hooker) Moquin-Tandon.]

Gypsophila repens Linnaeus [The voucher specimen collected by a non-botanist in 1900 from York Co., Maine (NEBC) with no habitat information is not accepted as evidence for establishment in the wild.]

Illecebrum verticillatum Linnaeus [no specimen located and deemed not established in the wild; reported from Middlesex Co., Massachusetts as a weed in a nursery in Flora of North America Editorial Committee (2005)]

Paronychia fastigiata (Rafinesque) Fernald var. nuttallii (Small) Fernald [reported from Sagadohoc Co., Maine; no specimens located in herbaria that are the basis for this atlas]

Persicaria chinensis (Linnaeus) H. Gross [no specimen located; reported from Massachusetts in Flora of North America Editorial Committee (2005)]

Phemeranthus teretifolius (Pursh) Rafinesque [no specimen located; reported from Connecticut]

Polycnemum majus A. Braun ex Bogenhard [no specimen located; reported from Coös Co., New Hampshire in Rhodora 69: 31 (1967)]

Polygonum oxyspermum C. A. Meyer & Bunge ex Ledebour subsp. raii (Babington) D. A. Webb & Chater [no specimen located; reported from Maine]

Rumex conglomeratus Murray [no specimen located; reported from Massachusetts in Flora of North America Editorial Committee (2005)]

Rumex sanguineus Linnaeus [no specimen located; reported from Connecticut]

Salicornia rubra A. Nelson [no specimen located; reported from Connecticut]

Silene coeli-rosa (Linnaeus) Godron [The voucher specimen collected as a garden weed from Middlesex Co., Massachusetts (NEBC) is not accepted as evidence for establishment in the wild.]

Spergularia diandra (Gussone) Heldreich [identity of voucher in doubt; This record is based on a specimen from Barnstable Co., Massachusetts (NEBC) cited by Ruth Rossbach in Rhodora 42:83 (1940) in which uncertainty of its identity is expressed. Rossbach annotated the herbarium sheet as "Spergularia purpurea (Persoon) G. Don ?" in 1937.]

Spergularia media (Linnaeus) C. Presl var. media [voucher specimens from Maine and Massachusetts were misidentified; no other New England vouchers found]

Spergularia purpurea (Persoon) G. Don [identity of voucher is in doubt; This record is based on the same specimen cited as Spergularia diandra (Gussone) Heldreich, which is excluded as explained above.]

Stellaria longipes Goldie subsp. longipes [no specimen located; reported from Maine]

Stellaria palustris Ehrhart ex Hoffmann [no specimen located; reported from Knox Co., Maine]

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. We thank the curators and directors of the herbaria of the New England Botanical Club, Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts, the University of Vermont, and the University of Connecticut for allowing access to their collections. For the University of Maine herbarium we used their exceptional online database of Maine specimens (http://herbaria.umaine.edu/). We are grateful also to Karen Searcy for allowing access to the herbarium and to the notebooks of Harry E. Ahles at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), for bringing to our attention some new voucher specimens there and for checking information. James Hinds also generously checked information on voucher specimens at the University of Maine (Orono). The following persons also kindly checked certain records for us at their respective institutions: Janet Sullivan, Robert Capers, Christopher Campbell, Elizabeth Allen, Gisèle Mitrow, and Jennifer Doubt. Arthur Haines provided useful corrections to a draft of this paper. We thank Kanchi Gandhi for nomenclatural assistance.