Endangered and Threatened Plant Species
of the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge Complex
A field guide created by Biological Technicians Morgan Donaldson, Holly Walp, and Owen Segaard during the 2019 field season.
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Fringed Black Bindweed (Polygonum cilinode Michx.)
Description: A twining or erect perennial herb that grows up to 7 feet long. Stems have fine, downward-pointing bristles. Greenish-white to pink 5-parted flowers with petals and petal-like sepals. The inflorescence is 1.5 - 3 '', with loose, mostly branched, small, cylindrical clusters of stalked flowers. Very shiny black fruits. Leaves are alternate and large oval to triangular with a deep heart-shaped base and wavy margins. Stems become red with prolonged exposure to sunlight, and can become stout and erect if there is no available support. Blooms June to September Habitat: Dry woods, thickets, rocky slopes, forest edges, grassland, and sand dunes. Also recently disturbed areas. Status: A state-listed endangered species. Known Locations: North Crane Creek |
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Eastern Prairie Fringed Orchid (Platanthera leucophaea)
Description: This native perennial plant grows 1-3 ' tall, forming a single central stem. The alternate light green leaves are 3-8'' long and 1.5'' across, and become smaller in size as they ascend the stem. They are lanceolate or narrowly lanceolate, and sparsely distributed overall. The lowest leaves clasp the stem while the middle and upper leaves are sessile or have short petioles. They have smooth edges and texture with faint parallel veins. The stem terminates in a raceme of 5-40 flowers. Each flower is about 1.5'' long and 1'' across, consisting of 3 greenish white sepals and a 3-part lower lip. The large white lower lip is heavily fringed and about an inch long. Flowers also have a 1-2'' long nectar spur (tube-like structure). Blooms late June to early July for 7-10 days. Habitat: Only small, local populations of this rare plant exist in high quality habitats, including moist to mesic black soil prairies, sand praries, thickets, pot hole marshes, and fens. At one time this orchid was far more common and hundreds of plants could be observed blooming in prairie habitat. This was ended by habitat destruction and over-collection. Status: Listed as a federally threatened plant wherever found. Also state-listed threatened species. Known Locations: Present in three known locations on the ONWR Complex: Young property, Crane Creek, and Cedar Point. |
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Seaside Spurge (Chamaesyce polygonifolia)
Description: This annual plant sprawls across the ground forming a low mat of leafy stems up to 12'' across. The central stem divides early, forming numerous lateral stems that also divide. The stems are terete, pale red, and hairless. At intervals, pairs of opposite leaves occur along the stems that are 1/4'' -3/4'' in length. They are about 3 times as long as they are across. Individual leaves are narrowly oblong in shape and smooth along their margins. There is a tendency for the lower half of a leaf to be slightly wider than its upper half. The upper leaf surface is medium green and hairless, while the lower surface is pale green and hairless. At the base of each leaf, tehre is a short, slender petiole. White to light green stipules are sharply and deeply cleft into linear to lanceolate lobes with narrow pointed tips. These stipules soon wither away. Both the stems and the leaves exude a milky latex when they become damaged. Tiny flowers with cyathia (cup-like structures) develop near pairs of leaves. There is normally only a single cyathium (cup-like structure) per pair of leaves. The cyathium is less than 2mm long and its outer surface is light green and hairless. Each cyathium has a short stalk at its base that is terete and pale red. Seeds are ejected from their capsules at maturity. The root system consists of a slender branching taproot. This plant spreads by reseeding itself. Habitat: Shores of the Great Lakes, sandy beaches and dunes. Status: Potentially threatened. Known Locations: Beach at Cedar Point. |
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Oakes' Evening Primrose (Oenothera oakesiana)
Description: Oakes' Evening Primrose is an annual herb species with erect or ascending stems simple or branching from the base (the upper portion of the inflorescence nodding at the tip), 0.5 to 2 meters tall, and covered with long, spreading, whitish hairs. The leaves are gray-green in color, narrowly oblanceolate or elliptic, and entirely or remotely toothed. The flowers are sessile, open at twilight and are borne in the axils of the upper leaves. They have greenish or yellow sepals with red flecks or stripes, connivent at the base, and pale yellow petals 7 to 20 mm long. The fruit are rounded capsules thickest near the bases and 1.5 to 4 cm long, containing angular, unpitted seeds. Flowers from August to September. Similar Species: Common Evening primrose is similar but Oakes' has much smaller flowers. Habitat: Sandy or rocky shores, dunes, and clearings along the Great Lakes; occasionally inland along railroads, on sandy shores, in clearings or other disturbed places. Especially frequent on the Great Lakes shores. Status: Ohio state threatened. Known Locations: Beach at Cedar Point. |
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Beach Wormwood (Artemisia campestris)
Description: This is a native biennial or short-lived perennial forb that produces one to many stems reaching nearly 5 feet in height. Stems arise from woody caudex. It has many branches, stem ascending, woody bae, virtually glabrous, usually dark reddish brown. Growth forms very from mounded to spreading. Basal leaves are crowded and measure .8 to 4'' long by often less than 2 mm wide. Basal leaves may or may not persist. Leaf hairiness ranges from glabrous to densely villous. Leaves are alternate, lower is stalked and the upper portion is stalkless. Blade is fleshy, hairy when young and later becomes glabrous, 2-3 times pinnately lobed, lobes thread-like, narrow and sharply pointed. Stem leaves are smaller and have less pronounced dissection than basal leaves. Flowers are inconspicuous and occur in spike- or panicle-like inflorescences. Beach wormwood produces 5 to 20 ray and 6-40 disk flowers but only ray flowers are fertile. Fruits are achenes measuring around .8 mm long and lacking a pappus. Habitat: Meadows, dry meadows, roadsides, railway embankments, sand pits, sandy shores. Status: Ohio state threatened. Known Locations: Beach at Cedar Point. |
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Bushy Cinquefoil (Paradox cinquefoil)
Description: An annual or short-lived perennial forb that grows 8-12 inches in height. Leaves are alternate along the branches and the lower stem leaves are pinnately compound and 2-3 inches long. The 7 to 11 oblong to oval leaflets have coarsely toothed edges, the tips blunt or rounded, the surfaces soft from short, fine hairs. Leaves are smaller as they ascend the stem becoming 3-parted and short stalked in the flower clusters. At the base of the leaf stalk is a pair of leafy appendages (stipules) that are lance shaped with a sharply pointed tip and smooth edges. Stems are smooth to hairy with diffuse branching that is spreading to ascending. Flowers on short stalks in branching, leafy clusters at the branch tips, bright yellow, around 1/4'' across with 5 nearly round petals with a slight depression at the tip giving them a rounded heart shape. Directly behind them are 5 broad lance-like sepals, sharply pointed, about as long as the petals and alternating between them with another set of lance shaped bractlets behind them. The outer surface of bractlets and sepals are hairy. Blooms from June - August. Habitat: Full sun, moist or wet sandy soil, lakeshores, river banks, sand bars, low fields. Status: Ohio state threatened. Known Locations: Beach at Cedar Point. |
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Schweinitz's Umbrella Sedge (Cyperus schweinitzii)
Description: This is a native perennial sedge that grows roughly 8-30'' in height. Leaves are few, basal and alternate but near the base are flat or V-shaped in cross section, 2-8mm wide, 6-14'' long, and rough along the edges. Basal sheaths are brown to reddish-brown. Stems are single or few from the base, erect to ascending, slender, 3-sided with sharp angles, and rough at least on the upper stem. Plants form loose clumps from short, knotty rhizomes. 1-10 clusters up to 1 inch long at the tip of the stem, each cluster with 3-18 spikelets (flower clusters). The main cluster of spikelets is stalkless and mostly inverted cone-shaped (obconic) in outline, auxiliary clusters are usually smaller, on stalks 1/2 to 5'' long, obconic to oblong-elliptic in outline. At the base of the group of clusters are 3 to 8 leaf-life bracts of varying lengths, mostly flat, 1-8 inches long, all erect to slightly ascending. Spikelets are flattened, oblong in outline, up to 2.5 cm long, with 3-14 florets, each subtended by a scale. Florets have 3 stamens and a 3-parted style. Scales are 2.5 to 3.5 mm long, whitish to straw-colored and sometimes red-spotted, broadly lance-elliptic, 2 or 3 ribbed per side with a green midrib that extends to an awn .2 to 1mm long. The scales are arranged on opposite sides of the central spikelet stalk (rachilla), ascending and overlapping, sometimes barely so. The floral scales are achenes (seeds) drop off individually when mature, leaving the naked stalk behind. Achenes are 2 to 3 mm long, 1-1.5 mm wide, dark brown to blackish when mature, 3-sided, broadly elliptic in outline, somewhat tapered at the base and more rounded at the tip end. Habitat: Full sun, dry, sandy soils, sand prairies, dunes, roadsides, railroads. Status: Ohio state threatened. Known Locations: Beach at Cedar Point. |
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