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| Photo
by Renee Brecht |
Britton and Brown. See
credits below.** |
| Botanical name: |
Narthecium americanum Ker Gawl. |
| Common
name: |
bog asphodel
|
| Synonomy: |
| Abama americana (Ker Gawl.) Morong |
| Abama montana Small |
| Narthecium ossifragum (L.) Huds. var. americanum (Ker Gawl.) A. Gray |
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| Group: |
Monocot
|
| Family: |
Liliaceae |
| Growth
Type: |
Forb/herb
|
| Duration: |
Perennial
|
| Origin: | Native |
| Plant
height: |
up to a .5 meter
|
| Foliage: |
cluster of erect, basal leaves, up to 20 cm long.
|
| Flower
color: |
bright yellow |
| Flower
size: |
4-9 mm long, crowded in a raceme at the top of the single stem |
| Flowering/fruiting time |
Blooms June-July; 1 cm-long, pointed fruits with 8 mm-long elliptical seeds |
| Habitat: |
margins of streams, pine barrens savannahs |
| Range
in
New Jersey: |
within the Pine barrens |
| Heritage ranking if any: |
S2, LP, HL; candidate species for federal listing |
| Distribution |
|
| Misc.: |
Pollination
is a combination of selfing and cross-pollination via insect vectors
(Summerfield 1974 as quoted by Center for Plant Conservation: Bog Asphodel)
Deer herbivor and succession of bogs as well as hydrological changes are threats to Narthecium americanum.
Witmer
Stone writes of bog asphodel: "This remarkable plant was discovered by
Frederick Pursh (1774-1820), one of the first botanists to publish on
the Pine Barrens flora, on one of his excursions in the swamps about
Quaker Bridge. At the time Dr. Britton's Catalogue was published,
seventy-five years later, there were but five stations known where it
grew, while to-day I have seen specimens from only a dozen, all of
which lie between Tom's River on the north and Atsion and Pleasant
Mills on the south, mostly east of the New Jersey Southern
Railroad--roughly speaking an area twenty by thirty miles. This has
been supposed to be the only spt in the world where the plant occurs,
but in the Commons herbarium at the Academy of Natural Sciences,
Philadelphia, there are specimens of both Abama and Tofieldia from
near Lewes, Delaware, collected by Mr. Albert Commons, August 1 and 15,
1895, respectively. Probably some of the older localities are now
extinct, as the Abama is one
of those plants which are exterminated by cranberry culture. The
damming and flooding of the bogs covers the low wet sandy spots
frequented by the plant and it disappears--at least I have never been
able to find it on the edges of cultivated bogs. On the branches of the
Wading River about Chatsworth and Speedwell, where broad, wet sandy
bogs abound, I have seen great patches of Abama, the
short stiff leaves curving up from the root stalks in the thick ranks
like short grass, and the yellow spikes standing close together make a
golden sheen over the bog that can be seen at quite a distance. Even
when in fruit they make quite a show, the seed capsules being rich
reddish brown and the stalks and bracts buff like wheat chaff" (339).
Narthecium, or Abama, as it was referred to in Stone's time, has been extirpated from Delaware. Small pockets exist in South and North Carolina.
Element Stewardship Abstract
US Fish & Wildlife Service Species Assessment
Flora of North America
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Sources
**USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database / Britton, N.L., and A. Brown. 1913. An illustrated flora of the northern United States, Canada and the British Possessions. Vol. 1: 487.
Stone, Witmer.
The Plants of Southern New Jersey.Quartermen Publications, Inc. Boston,
Mass. Reprinted 1973 from 1911 The Plants of Southern New Jersey with
Especial Reference to the Flora of the Pine Barrens and the Geographic
Distribution of the Species.
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