Research Report #29 — Botanical Significance of the Shawangunk Mountains and the Mohonk Preserve
For many years scientists and naturalists have been studying and observing the flora and fauna of the Shawangunk Ridge. Foremost among them was Daniel Smiley, for whom Mohonk Preserve’s Daniel Smiley Research Center is named. Dan wrote numerous reports summarizing his observations on various topics. This regularly occurring series will feature some of these reports; some hold tremendous scientific value today and just await an interested researcher to follow up, others showcase a quirky sense of humor or highlight an oddity of nature.
Read the report: Botanical Significance of the Shawangunk Mountains and the Mohonk Preserve. February 1987. Paul C. Huth.
A Note from Paul C. Huth, Director of Research Emeritus: My work with Daniel Smiley, starting in the early 1970s, was principally focused on vascular plants and the vegetational history of the Northern Shawangunks. I was very impressed by Dan’s attention to detail and the documentary records he had amassed over the decades. We were very lucky that he had a compulsion to write things down, and that he was exposed to family and Mohonk staff who had experienced life on this land during the second half of the 19th century. Having an interest in plants, Dan also collected, dried, and mounted plants over the decades forming a notable documentary herbarium of Shawangunk species.
This Research Report was derived from our Shawangunk field work, records, and herbarium collection housed at the Research Center, and from our interest in the vegetational history of the Northern Shawangunks, especially that of the historic period over the past 300 years. It is also connected directly with my close work and friendship with three exceptional fellow botanists-Mary Domville, from Ulster County, who had inherited county plant records from botanist, Henry F. Dunbar, and who continued field work which resulted in the publication of “Ulster County Flora” in 1970, Catskill Mountain botanist, Karl L. Brooks, whose decades of field work in the geographical Catskills resulted in publication of several volumes of “A Catskill Flora and Economic Botany,” 1979–1984, and Stanley J. Smith, Curator of Botany, New York State Museum.
Stan Smith influenced me to think about plants and their distribution in a different context, from looking at individual localities to the much broader geographical, glacial, spatial, and latitudinal species distribution. The position of Shawangunk Mountains in southeastern New York, and their northeast to southwest orientation, fall between the northern boreal and southern Carolinian plant associations. This makes for a diversity of plant communities and a richness of species which we have clearly documented. Recognizing this unique biodiversity, both nationally and globally, in 1993, the Nature Conservancy added the Shawangunk Mountains to its list of Earth’s “Last Great Places.”
Plants originating from distant time have been investigated from their pollen and macrofossils contained in swamp and lake sediment cores dating from the early/mid-Holocene. Several species extending from the glacial period exist in the Northern Shawangunks as rare glacial relicts. One, that has been documented here since 1881, is the Broom Crowberry (Corema comradii). The New York Natural Heritage Program has documented it’s existence with the help of our long term records, and is monitoring 26 other species of rare plants and 14 significant natural vegetation communities in the Northern Shawangunks. Another long documented species is the rare fern, Mountain Spleenwort (Asplenium montanum). Decades of field work, careful observations and detailed species records at the Daniel Smiley Research Center helped support individual species and community designations.
New non-native plant species are also being found and documented. Probably a third of the vascular species documented here are non-native, some from horticulture and agriculture being intentionally introduced, but most unintentionally introduced. One of the latest that is quickly spreading is the Japanese Stiltgrass (Microstegium vimineum), which I collected as a new species with Dr. Richard S. Mitchell, State Botanist, in October 1996. Intensive land use over the past 300 years has had monumental influences on species distribution and the assemblage of plant communities we see today. More recently, well documented climate change, as recorded here at the Mohonk Lake Cooperative Weather Station of the National Weather Service, now in it’s 123rd year of operation, is also proving influential on the whole Shawangunk ecosystem.
Because of the plant richness of the Shawangunk Mountains, noted national, regional, and local botanists have visited the ridge in various locations for the last 150 years or so to search out specialty plant groups and species. These include, among others, Nathaniel Lord Britton in 1883, co-founder of the New York Botanical Garden, and co-author with Judge Addison Brown, of their historic 1896, 1897, and 1898, three volume “An Illustrated Flora of the United States, Canada and the British Possessions…”, John E. Smith, 1880, and John H. Redfield, 1884, both from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, four prominent New York State Botanists-Drs. Charles Horton Peck, the first State Botanist, Homer D. House, Eugene C. Ogden, and Richard S. Mitchell, Stanley J. Smith, Curator of Botany, New York State Museum, Dr. Norton G. Miller, Curator of Bryology and Quaternary Paleobotany, New York State Museum, Dr. Dorothy M. Peteet, Adjunct Senior Research Scientist, Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, and Dr. Emily W. B. Russell Southgate, Hood College, and author of the must read, “People and the Land Through Time, Linking Ecology and History” (Yale University Press, 1997).
In a letter from Alfred H. Smiley to Albert K. Smiley dated June 21, 1872, Alfred reports that “a botanist from Albany in the employ of the Board of Regents for several years….spent several days here and has made a collection of Sky top ferns….the new fern Asplenium montanus drew him here & he finds it in several places.” The botanist was Dr. Charles Horton Peck. His signature appears in the Mohonk Mountain House guest register on June 17, 1872 (Mohonk Mountain House Archives).
Here at Mohonk Preserve’s Daniel Smiley Research Center, we continue our long-term documentation of the flora of the Northern Shawangunk Mountains. The extensive observations and studies by our staff, Research Associates, and students, as part of the 150 year long continuum of plant research enable us to make comparisons concerning abundance, habitats, distribution, and occurrence of plants in the Shawangunks that would otherwise be impossible. Now, digitization of the herbarium collection and documentary plant records is underway and is considered a high priority. There are still many research opportunities. We are fortunate, as very few other areas, in having such an historical flora.
Read the report: Botanical Significance of the Shawangunk Mountains and the Mohonk Preserve. February 1987. Paul C. Huth.
