Beak rush and broom sedge grow in thin soil on a rock outcrop at Carl Sandburg Home. NatureServe scientists and park volunteers identified 10 plant communities, including this one that is globally rare, in the 2001 inventory.
NPS photo by Tom Fergason

Anne Ulinski
Volunteer Naturalist, Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, Flat Rock, North Carolina

“... small parks are often sites of tremendous biodiversity.”

NatureServe scientists have been working with the Cumberland Piedmont Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) Network to inventory plants and plant communities in the network’s smaller parks. Inventory activities at Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in western North Carolina prove that good things can come in small packages. An inventory at the historic site in 2001 identified 10 separate plant communities and 124 vascular plant species newly documented on the property, which covers just 262 acres.

Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site is located in the village of Flat Rock, North Carolina, surrounded by the biologically rich southern Appalachian Mountains. The home, barns, outbuildings, lakes, and pastures occupy about 50 acres of the park, which attracts nearly 150,000 visitors each year. Woodlands and a small old-growth forest take up the remaining acreage. The topography and geology of the site are complex, with globally rare rock outcroppings occurring in nine or more places.

The scientists who visited the park in fall 2001 identified 10 plant communities or associations: a pine woodland, a dry chestnut-oak forest, a mesic chestnut-oak forest, an acidic Appalachian cove forest, an acidic montane oak-hickory forest, a seminatural wooded upland, an herbaceous vegetation meadow, a white waterlily aquatic wetland, a rush marsh, and a “flat rock community” called Appalachian low-elevation granitic dome. This last association is ranked “G2,” or globally very rare. These findings suggest that small parks are often sites of tremendous biodiversity.

In September, I&M scientists collected more than 120 vascular plant specimens newly documented at the park. These specimens will be added to the historic park’s on-site herbarium. The herbarium is the result of a two-year partnership, 1996 to 1997, between the southeastern office of The Nature Conservancy and the National Park Service. The new additions bring the collection total to at least 540 vascular plant species, an impressive number for a “historic” park.

The Carl Sandburg Home has attracted qualified and dedicated volunteers for many of the park’s needs. Volunteers have carried out almost all of the natural resource work, including the first vascular plant inventory in 1992. In fact, two volunteers collected more than half of the herbarium’s original specimens. One retired scientist collected 281 specimens of mosses, lichens, and liverworts at the historic site from 1996 to 1998. Today, volunteers continue to enrich the herbarium and assist the park’s museum curator in entering the specimen records into the Automated National Catalog System.

Vascular plant inventories with good field notes are invaluable in locating invasive plants. Invasive plants are a management concern because they are nonnative species that can overtake and disrupt native plant communities. Small parks with boundaries close to developed land like this historic site are especially vulnerable to invasions of exotic species. During summer 2001, a forestry technician identified 30 exotic species and prepared a three-year management plan for their removal and future control.

Native plants and habitats are also being destroyed by development. Because the Carl Sandburg Home lies in one of North Carolina’s fastest-growing counties, it is a refuge for many native plants of special concern. For example, the historic site is home to the Appalachian fameflower (Talinum teretifolium), which is imperiled in North Carolina; the Biltmore carrionflower (Smilax biltmoreana); the Piedmont ragwort (Packera millefolium), which is threatened in North Carolina; and the hybrid ragwort (Packera x memmingeri), a narrow endemic species known in only a few North Carolina mountain counties. Other species of special concern are roughish witchgrass (Dichanthelium leucothrix) and floating bladderwort (Utricularia radiata), which are disjunct species—coastal plants whose presence on mountain land is not clearly understood.

Small parks like Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site are increasingly important repositories for biological diversity, becoming refuges for native plants threatened by exotic species and development. Inventories provide the scientific information needed to preserve the unique natural heritage of this small mountain park.