Plant and Natural Community Investigations in Connecticut's Appalachian Trail Corridor

National Park Service

Report on the result of the Plant and Natural Community Investigations taken along the Appalachian Trail in Connecticut. The Appalachian Trail corridor is defined in this report as the 50-mile length of the Trail in Connecticut to a distance of 500 feet on either side of the footpath. The Trail corridor in Connecticut is entirely within Litchfield County. Most of the land in the corridor is owned by the state of Connecticut or by the National Park Service. In general, surveys extended to a maximum distance of 500 feet on either side of the footpath where the land was owned by the state or the federal government. At certain sites where National Park Service ownership extended beyond 500 feet and there was a possibility of finding rare plants and habitats, the survey covered a broader area. At the Bear Mountain and Bulls Bridge Sites, for example, field investigations went farther than 500 feet from the footpath. Where the corridor of public land was narrower than 500 feet from the footpath, investigations extended to the limit of state or federally owned land. Private land was not surveyed except for property owned by the Appalachian Mountain Club on Bear Mountain and by the Mt. Riga Corporation in Wachocastinook Ravine, This survey has three primary goals: 1) documentation of rare plant populations 2) compilation of a comprehensive checklist of native and naturalized non-native vascular plants 3) identification, sampling, and description of the plant communities in the survey area, using the Draft Vegetation Classification for Connecticut (Metzler and Barrett 2003) as a guide. This report supplements an earlier inventory of the natural resources of the Connecticut Appalachian Trail area conducted in 1991 by biologists from the Connecticut Natural Diversity Database (McKay et al. 1992). That inventory encompassed a wider trail corridor, and investigated rare fauna as well as rare plants. This project has as its focus the corridor's flora and natural communities.