New York Native Aquatic Plants

4548 Views 6 Replies 5 Participants Last post by theatermusic87, Jan 20, 2017

Bananableps

Discussion Starter · Jan 20, 2017

Found this interesting article: A Field Guide of Aquatic Macrophyte Species Found in New York Lakes along with Potential Non-Native (Exotic) Invaders

If you have additional resources on plants native to our state, please post in this thread!

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I had no idea Myrio Heterophyllum is native to the North America, and even some parts of New England! I have some coming in the mail next week. What a thrill!

Interesting to note that while Myrio H can be found in New York as well as many other parts of the US, it is invasive in New Hampshire and Maine. We must always be careful about preventing our tanks from contaminating natural ecosystems, even if we think we have an all-native setup! What's native to one lake might be virulently invasive to another lake, even in the same state!

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Axelrodi202

· #3 · Jan 20, 2017

Yes, I often saw Myriophyllum when my family went boating in NJ and NY.

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Marc Gallagher

· #4 · Jan 20, 2017

Good article, thanks for posting it.

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f Majalis

· #5 · Jan 20, 2017 (Edited)

What a great thread idea!

My favorite resources for identifying the ranges of native species for both land- and water- plants are these:

The Biota of North America: North American Plant Atlas
2014 BONAP North American Plant Atlas

And if you live in the NYC Area:
The New York Metropolitan Plant Atlas
http://nymf.bbg.org/contents.asp

I use them by looking up the genus of a species I'm wondering about, and looking through the species list until I see the one I want. NAPA lists, county-by-county what species is native (light green), adventive/noxious (blue/purple), and rare or endangered (yellow/orange). If it's native to a state, the rest of the state will be dark green, if it's invasive, the state will be dark blue.

For the NYMPA, it's the same thing but even more specific than the county-level (ie, for Ludwigia palustris, it is native to Brooklyn is only located in Mill Basin and Prospect Park, and the map reflects this). Green squares are sightings from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's 1999 survey, yellow are historical sightings. You have to read the label to learn if a plant is native, there's no color code for that. Please don't use this info to collect or release plants: in most waterways, it is illegal, and there are many species that are endangered here due to habitat loss as massive degradation and some areas have species that are endangered everywhere (not too many coastal plains still exist anymore).

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theatermusic87

· #6 · Jan 20, 2017

Axelrodi202 said:
Yes, I often saw Myriophyllum when my family went boating in NJ and NY.

More than likely what you saw was myriophyllum spicatum (eurasian milfoil) it is very invasive and very widely distributed, it also grows in much denser populations and would be more noticable

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theatermusic87

· #7 · Jan 20, 2017

Here's a couple of other links for stuff I've stumbled across over the years as far as plant guides

This one is by the same author as the first one posted, and has comparisons between native and their invasive look alikes
http://www.nyis.info/user_uploads/files/Invasive%20Aquatic%20Weeds%20-%20Weeds%20Watch%20Out.pdf

Well it was going to be a couple of links... but they are so old they no longer work... oh well enjoy the one i listed

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