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Christine Gang
2012 Charles T. Mohr Intern
Christine
Gang is one of the Charles T. Mohr Interns in the University of North
Carolina Herbarium this summer. She is
from Burlington, North Carolina and is a rising senior at UNC-Chapel Hill
majoring in Biology.
For her internship Christine is
studying Blue Curls, Trichostema
L., in the Mint Family. There are about
18 species in the genus Trichostema, and all are native to temperate North
America. Some are shrubs, some
perennial herbs, and some are annual herbs.
While Trichostema
is especially diverse in Western North America, there is a second center of
diversity here in the Southeastern United States.
Trichostema dichotomum
L. “Common Blue Curls”
Photo by Thomas G. Barnes; used with permission
Christine is
examining three southeastern species, T.
dichotomum L. (Common Blue Curls), T. setaceum Houtt. (Narrowleaf Blue Curls),
and T. suffrutescens
Kearney (Scrub Blue Curls). She is
also studying two new species that
have been tentatively named T. nesophilum ined. (Dune Blue
Curls) and T. floridanum
ined. (Florida Blue Curls) by Dr. Alan Weakley, Curator of the University of
North Carolina Herbarium.
Christine’s
internship project is to study and compare the morphology of the southeastern
Blue Curls. These morphological
measurements will be used to describe the two new species when they are
officially published. The
morphological characters that she uses include leaf size (ration of length to
width), length of the hairs that are found in the flowering portion of the
plant (“inflorescence”), and branching pattern. In addition, both new species have geographic,
flower color differences, and habit differences supporting the notion that
they are distinct from currently known species of Trichostema.
Where do these new, unpublished
species of Trichostema
grow? The proposed common name and
scientific name of each plant gives us a clue. Trichostema floridana, Florida Blue Curls, has been found in
maritime dunes, grasslands and coastal shrub from eastern Georgia, all the
way around the Florida peninsula and westward to southern Mississippi and in
the Bahamas. Trichostema nesophilum (“island-loving”), Dune
Blue Curls or Carolina Blue Curls, has a much more restricted range: it is endemic to dunes and openings in
maritime scrub on barrier islands in North and South Carolina. Even without an official name, Dune Blue
Curls is already being monitored by the North Carolina Natural Heritage
Program. It is listed as a SR-L
(Significantly Rare -- Limited) species, “the range of the species is limited
to North Carolina and adjacent states (endemic or near endemic)…the
preponderance of [its] distribution is in North Carolina and [its] fate
depends largely on conservation here.”1
1.
Franklin, Misty
A. and John T. Finnegan. 2006. Natural Heritage Program List of Rare Plant
Species of North Carolina 2006.
Raleigh, NC: North Carolina
Natural Heritage Program.
Curriculum North Carolina UNC
In Ecology Botanical Garden Biology Department
University of North Carolina
Herbarium
CB# 3280, Coker Hall
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3280
phone: (919) 962-6931
fax: (919) 962-6930
email: mccormickATSIGNunc.edu
Last Updated: 6 February 2013