Annotated Checklist of the Vascular Flora of Bryce Canyon National Park (Older Version)

Fertig, Walter; Topp, Sarah

In 2005-06, the National Park Service's Northern Colorado Plateau Network received funding to develop a revised checklist of the vascular plant flora of Bryce Canyon National Park. This entailed a through review of existing literature, re-examination of speciments from the Bryce Canyon National Park herbarium and other state and national museum collections, and additional field work to corroborate unverified species reports or locate new species. Based on this study, 587 vascular plant taxa have been confirmed or reliably reported as occuring in the park (553 are known from validated herbarium specimens and 34 from unvouchered literature reports). Another 76 species formerly considered part of the park flora have now been shown to be falsely reported. The current flora of Bryce Canyon National park represents 16.3% of the known flora of Utah and 36.5% of the flora of the Utah High Plateaus ecoregion. Although no species are federally listed as Threatened or Endangered, 50 plant taxa from the park were formerly candidates for potential listing, are considered Sensitive by the US Forest Service and BLM, or are considered species of concern by the state natural heritage program. Introduced plants make up 10.2% of the park flora (60 species), of which only 7 species are considered noxious weeds by the state of Utah. Further surveys in Bryce Canyon National Park are likely to find additional new species (298 are known from similar habitats outside the park boundary), especially among late season flowering, weedy, or wetland taxa.

Annotated Checklist of the Vascular Flora of Bryce Canyon National Park (Older Version)

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