Featherfoil makes a reappearance

A featherfoil floats in a Scioto County swamp/Jim McCormac

Featherfoil makes a reappearance

Columbus Dispatch
July 17, 2022

NATURE
Jim McCormac

About 1,800 species of native plants have been found in Ohio. This ornate botanical tapestry forms the underpinnings of ecological communities, and as such, bears close watch.

Plants are the building blocks that transfer energy into much of the animal world, and most animals that we see and enjoy depend upon them either directly or indirectly.

Beginning in 1980, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Natural Areas and Preserves (DNAP) has maintained the official listing of the state’s rare flora. It is updated biennially and decisions are not scattershot. To be listed as endangered or threatened, a plant must meet specific criteria.

Furthermore, a respected body of knowledgeable Midwestern botanists — from Ohio and several surrounding states — convenes every other winter to hash out changes to the list.

The current Rare Native Ohio Plants Status List includes 254 endangered, 165 threatened, and 104 potentially threatened species. The latter category is a watch list, species that botanists feel are declining or rare for other reasons, but do not yet have enough evidence to warrant a higher category of imperilment.

Another category is perhaps the most lamentable: the 86 extirpated plants. These are species that once occurred in Ohio but have not been seen for over 20 years. Some of these plants were once at least locally common, others probably always rare with a tenuous foothold within the boundaries of our state.

Reasons for extirpation are many. Habitat destruction is the biggest, but others include habitat degradation, loss of pollinators, changing climate and invasive plants. Two hard-hit habitats are prairies and wetlands. Perhaps 5% of Ohio was prairie prior to European settlement, now less than 1% remains. Five million acres of the state was wetland, about 91% has been lost. Many plants have vanished as well.

When an extirpated plant is rediscovered, it is akin to a botanical phoenix rising from the ashes. Such was the case in May 2017, when DNAP botanist Andrew Gibson visited a small, swampy pool on an Ohio River terrace in Scioto County. To his surprise and delight, a plethora of one of America’s oddest primroses was vigorously blooming.

Andrew had rediscovered featherfoil (Hottonia inflata). Chance favors the prepared mind, and Gibson knew this was an old site for the plant. It had last been documented there in 1981. Many botanists, this author included, had checked the site routinely for decades. While some of us held faint hope that featherfoil would reappear, no one was holding their breath.

When I saw Andrew’s report, I soon visited the site. It was invigorating to cast eyes upon a holy grail of plants. Making the experience greater was the sheer coolness factor of featherfoil. A floating primrose! The plant is a winter annual and germinates in fall. It grows in damp mud or shallow water over winter, then springs to the surface and flowers in May.

Featherfoil leaves are filamentous segments clustered at the plant’s base and mostly submerged. Small white flowers adorn the stems in well-separated whorled tiers capped with a dense terminal cluster. But the stems themselves are fantastical. Thick and swollen, the air-filled tissues arise from a common base and allow the plant to float.

The whole shebang resembles a vegetative buoy, anchored to the substrate with a fibrous root system. Its appearance is surreal.

It is hard to say why the lengthy gaps between blooming periods. The tiny seeds clearly seedbank well, sequestered in the mud until conditions are suitable for germination. It might be many years or even decades between blooms. Fortunately, this small pond still provides good habitat, at least in some years.

Featherfoil has a sporadic and widely scattered distribution in 27 states, mostly along the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains, and up the Mississippi River and its larger tributaries. It is listed as being in some degree of imperilment in 22 of those states. The gorgeous floating primrose is not just rare in Ohio.

I met the landowner and, fortunately, he is interested in the plants and the protection of their wetland. This bodes well for future conservation of one of our rarest plants.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at www.jimmccormac.blogspot.com.