Vascular Plant Species List for the Chickasaw Village Site of the Natchez Trace Parkway: 2025 Update

Carlson, Jane

The Chickasaw Village Site is a small but significant landmark along the Natchez Trace Parkway on the outskirts of Tupelo, Mississippi. Once the center of a large Native American village, the National Park Service (NPS) now owns and manages the site to preserve the cultural resources and simultaneously protect a rare Black Belt prairie remnant; one of the few still present on public lands in the county. The Site’s alkaline Black Belt soils support many unusual plant species, including at least two plant species tracked by the Mississippi Natural Heritage Program. As an actively-restored prairie with these and many more characteristic species of the Black Belt, the site is of particular interest to regional botanists, ecologists, and NPS natural resource professionals alike. The unique flora of the Chickasaw Village Site has been surveyed several times over the years, including several in-depth studies tied to the prairie restoration work that began in 1994. Yet there have been no comprehensive summaries of the site’s flora after 2001. The current report reviews findings of previous botanical studies at the site as a basis for future work with: • A summary of Black Belt prairie ecology and extent • Background on Chickasaw Village Site: land uses, restoration, vegetation types and soils • Review of known floristic studies at and around the Site during NPS ownership • An updated species list that combines both early and recent work