natural areas inventory - Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority

Checklist of the Vascular Plants of Niagara Regional Municipality, Ontario(M.J. Oldham March 2010)specimens are primarily at HAM. Gus Yaki explored the Niagara Region in the 1960’s and produced a checklist of Niagara plants in1970 (Yaki 1970).In the late 1980’s, 1990’s, and early 2000’s a number of natural areas in the Niagara Region had detailed botanical or life scienceinventories conducted, primarily by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. These inventories included including Short HillsProvincial Park (Gould 1989), Point Abino Area of Natural and Scientific Interest (ANSI) (Macdonald 1990), Wainfleet Bog ANSI(Macdonald 1992), Niagara Gorge ANSI (Varga and Kor 1993), Niagara Section Escarpment ANSI (Varga et al. 1992), Fifteen-Sixteen Mile Creek Valleys ANSI (Jalava et al. 1992), Beamsville Escarpment ANSI (Jalava et al. 1992), Jordan Valley ANSI(Schaefer et al. 1992), Marcy’s Woods (Oldham 2000), Niagara Falls (Eckel 2001), and the Niagara River (Oldham 2007). The“Ecological Survey of the Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve” (Riley et al. 1996) provides vascular plant lists for 16 surveyedsites on the Niagara Escarpment within Niagara R.M.Botanical fieldwork by the author and others at the Ontario Natural Heritage Information Centre or NHIC (Wasyl Bakowsky, SamBrinker) has been conducted in the Niagara Region in 2006, 2007, and 2008 on a variety of projects related to invasive species(Oldham and Brinker 2009b), parkland along the Niagara River (Oldham 2007), and the Niagara Natural Areas Inventory (NAI). Adatabase of botanical records gathered during these and earlier NHIC surveys (e.g. Oldham 2000) contains about 7,500 records.The Niagara Natural Areas Inventory (NAI) database contains records gathered during NAI fieldwork (about 60,000 vascular plantrecords) and records compiled from other sources (an additional 30,000 vascular plant records). In total more than 100,000georeferenced and databased vascular plant records were used to compile this checklist. Niagara R.M. specimens were examinedat several Ontario (CAN, DAO, HAM, NFO, NHIC, OAC, TRT, TRTE; herbarium acronyms follow Index Herbariorumhttp://sciweb.nybg.org/science2/IndexHerbariorum.asp) and New York (BUF) herbaria and databased Niagara specimen recordswere provided from HAM and TRT. Not all specimens cited in the checklist have been examined by the author.Taxonomy and Nomenclature (SCIENTIFIC NAME, COMMON NAME)Scientific names and family names used in this checklist largely follow the Flora of North America (FNA) for volumes published todate (FNA 1993, 1997, 2000, 2002a, 2002b, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2006c, 2007, 2009). For families whichhave not yet been covered by FNA a variety of sources have been used, primarily Morton and Venn (1990), Newmaster et al. (1998),and Kartesz (1999). Fern families follow Smith et al. (2006). Family level nomenclature primarily follows the Angiosperm PhylogenyWebsite (http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/research/APweb/welcome.html; Stevens 2001). Commonly used synonyms are provided atthe end of the Niagara Notes column; for additional synonymy see Morton and Venn (1990), Newmaster et al. (1998), and Kartesz(1999). Common names follow various sources, frequently Newmaster et al. (1998). Species are listed alphabetically by scientificname.Natural Heritage Areas Inventory, 2010 9-3