Vol. 16 No. 2

Long Island
Botanical Society

The Quarterly Newsletter

Spring 2006

Continuing the Botanical Tradition on Long Island: 1984-1985

Bob Zaremba

Coming to Long Island

I remember well my first visit to Long Island. It
was February 1984 and I was on my way to Cold Spring
Harbor from New Rochelle for an interview with The
Nature Conservancy (TNC) for a botanist position. I
drove along die Northern State Parkway, which was
lined with trees, and was surprised to see an extensive
forest on this part of Long Island. In Hicksville, where
I turned north, there were large open fields and what
appeared to be farms. Laurel Hollow and Cold Spring
Harbor had a forest that looked mature, healthy, and
diverse. With all that Liriodendron, maybe this was an
example of the Mixed Mesophytic Forest that I had
read about in the Mid-Adantic Region. Uplands Farm
appeared to be a working farm, with standing dead com
from last year’s crop and a greenhouse. Well, Long Is-
land was not really what I saw that day, nor was it the
developed suburban sprawl that I had anticipated. I cer-
tainly did not know at that time that I would become
very familiar with the many natural areas on the Island,
that I would become part of the continuing Long Island
botanical tradition and would help to begin a new bot-
any organization.

Carol Reschke and Beth Yanuck, the only two
employees of the New York Natural Heritage Program,
and Tom French of the TNC Regional Office in Boston
conducted the interview. Long Island needed a botanist
for a one-year position to document rare species and
natural communities for the active land protection pro-
gram in the two TNC chapters. This would be part of
the Natural Heritage Program work to map and record
species and community data for each state, an effort
that was already 10 years old but slow to establish in
New York. There were only a few hundred occurrences
of species and communities in the New York database
that was maintained by the Boston office. TNC wanted
to be sure that it had selected the most important sites

for protection. They wanted to know the significance
of these sites in relation to other sites in New York and
the region. Each site was regarded as a contribution to
a portfolio of places that would one day represent all
diversity in the United States.

While completing a post-doctoral fellowship with
the Massachusetts Audubon Society on Nantucket, I
had learned how to find and identify rare plants and to
use the methodology of the Heritage Programs from
Bruce Sorrie, the Massachusetts Natural Heritage Pro-
gram botanist. Bruce spent all of his time thinking
about plants, searching the woods, fields, and ponds for
rare species, and talking to other botanists about miss-
ing plants, historical fieldwork, and taxonomically con-
fusing plant groups. What could be more fun than that?

Upon leaving Nantucket, I knew what I wanted
to do. I wanted to work for TNC and to focus on rare
plant conservation. There was really only one prob-
lem — I had no training as a field botanist. I had a Ph.
D. in Botany, but I had never taken the basic flora
course, so that what I knew of the Northeastern flora I
had picked up in my two years on Nantucket. My inter-
view was cordial, but I left thinking it had been a disas-
ter. There was a focus on species identification and
plant ecology. And there was a quiz, through which I
stumbled: I did not know where to find sister acuminatus
and I guessed, never having heard of it, that Ulaeopsis
chinensis was a lily. So I was surprised to learn that TNC
would hire me.

Becoming a Heritage Botanist

Before the field season began, I, along with other
new Heritage botanists, traveled to Arlington, Virginia
to learn Heritage methodology from Bob Jenkins, the
head of TNC science, and Larry Morse, the chief bota-
nist. We learned how to record herbarium information

(Continued on page 15)

Page 14

Long Island
Botanical Society

Founded: 1986
Incorporated: 1989

The Long Island Botanical Society is
dedicated to the promotion of field
botany and a greater understanding
of the plants that grow wild on Long
Island, New York.

Visit the Society’s Web site

www.libotanical.org

Executive Board

President
Eric Lamont
Vice President
Skip Blanchard
Treasurer

Carol Johnston
Recording Secretary
Barbara Conolly
Corresponding Secretary
John Potente

Committee Chairpersons

Local Flora

Steven Clemants
Field Trips
Skip Blanchard
Programs
Rich Kelly
Membership
Lois Lindberg
Conservation
Andrew Greller
Education
Mary Laura Lamont
Hospitality
Jane Blanchard
Zu Proly
Dorothy Titus
Newsletter Editor
Margaret Conover
Newsletter Layout & Design
William Krol
Webmaster
Donald House

Long Island Botanical Society Vol. 16 No. 2

Society. News

LIBS is 20 years old! Our first meeting was held at the Museum of Long Island
Natural Science in Stony Brook, on May 1, 1986. Founding members were Joseph
Beitel, Jane Blanchard, Skip Blanchard, Karen Blumer, David Brandenburg, Bar-
bara Conolly, Margaret Conover, Steven Englebright, Louise Harrison, Jane Hoar,
Carol Johnston, Eric Lamont, Mary Laura Lamont, Robert Laskowski, Betty
Lotowycz, Travis MacClendon, Chris Mangels, Vincent Puglisi, Glenn Richard,
James Romansky, Steven Jay Sanford, Paul Stoutenburgh, Rosalie Talbert, James
Thomson, John Turner, Perry Welch, Ray Welch, Robert Zaremba, and Kim
Zartllo.

♦

Members and friends will not want to miss the anniversary celebration at LIBS’s
May 9 meeting, which will feature a talk on the early years of LIBS by Society co-
founder and first president, Dr. Bob Zaremba, This special anniversary issue of
the LIBS newsletter features both an article by Bob Zaremba and a centerfold
scrapbook of early photos of LIBS members. Then, in July, 18 LIBS members
will be celebrating on a special 20th anniversary botanizing trip to Newfoundland.

♦

As newsletter editor, and the other co-founder of the Society, I’d like to express
my appreciation to all those members who have participated in the life of our or-
ganization over the last 20 years. I know that we share a lot of great memories as
we have pursued field botany on Long Island. As Bob says in his article, we are all
a living part of a wonderful botanical tradition.

In other news. . .

At the January 10 meeting, Andy Greller reported sadly that Grace Forest is dead,
[see Andy’s 2005 article in the LIBS quarterly newsletter 15(1), pp. 6—7]. A Nassau
County judge has ruled in favor of the development and the only satisfaction is
that the DEC has been able to save the wetlands with a 100-foot border.

♦

Several LIBS members have become interested in tracking down and verifying re-
cords of big trees. The last Long Island Big Tree Survey was conducted by Plant-
ing Fields and published by the DEC in 1991. On March 22, Margaret Conover,
Andy Greller, and Gerry Moore spent a morning surveying some of the 50 or so
record-holding big trees at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Most of these were ex-
otic species, such as weeping willow and Amur honeysuckle. A notable exception
is the state record for the native species, Ilex montana , Mountain winterberry. With
over 600 trees to be surveyed, this work is a monumental task, and the Society will
not take it on as a project. However, we are planning a few more field trips. The
national champion Ailanthus tree grows, not in Brooklyn, but in St. James.

♦

Jenny Ulsheimer had resigned as co-chair of the Field Trip Committee. Bill Jacobs
has left his position as Invasive Species Project Director at The Nature Conser-
vancy.

♦

Marilyn Jordan announced that some trials that she had conducted indicated that
local Kud^u seeds are viable locally. Thirty-six percent of planted seeds in her ex-
periment had germinated within three weeks.

♦

Steve Clemants announced the publication of the book Wildjlowers in the Field and
Forest , which he authored with Carol Grade. It covers 1450 species with distribu-
tion maps and color illustrations. He noted that the new nomenclature of the
USDA Plant Database is employed. The book can by purchased online from
Amazon.com.

Long Island Botanical Society Vol. 16 No. 2

Page 15

(Continued from page 13)

and map historical occurrences, and we became familiar
with the Heritage database and die linkages between
species, population locations, protection, and manage-
ment. But more than anything else, we learned that we
were part of a vision to create an interactive body of
field scientists who would document the plants, animals,
and natural communities that we call biodiversity. Over
the next 18 years, as a member of this group of field-
oriented biologists, I contributed to the development of
the Heritage database, which has now become a power-
ful conservation tool.

Back on Long Island, TNC provided me with a
list of people to contact and places to visit. Fortunately,
Long Island has a long and well-documented history of
plant exploration that included a trail that was easy to
follow to sites. First, I traveled to the New York State
Museum in Albany to meet Dick Mitchell and Chuck
Sheviak who had recently published a book on New
York State rare plants that was the basis for the initial
Heritage rare plant tracking list of about 100 species.
Dick noted that the Sag Harbor Ponds were the site of
many historical rare plant populations that had not been
seen for years. I should be able to find some of these
populations, if I were to look.

The Herbarium of the New York State Museum
held hundreds of specimens for Long Island rare plants
with detailed information on locations of collections,
habitat, and when to look for particular species, as well
as a card file for all New York species, with specimen
data from herbaria throughout the Northeast. And then
there was a curious and massive list of New York spe-
cies with numbers developed by Stanley Smith, who had
worked in the State Museum in the 1950s and 1960s.
While it never become clear to me what these numbers
represented, they appeared to reflect abundance in a
way that would eventually prove useful to me.

Fieldwork

Upon my return to Long Island, I scheduled a
series of field meetings with local botanists to visit sites
and see occurrences of the listed species. My job was a
continuation of work initiated by Ann Johnson, who, in
1983, had already made some of the major contacts and
had recorded data for some of the well-known species
occurrences on the Island. She had also found new
populations of species, primarily on the South Fork.

The Long Island botanists generously shared
their data and showed me their favorite sites. Andy
Greller, John Cryan, and Mike Laspia suggested places
to visit. Later Bob Laskowski, Skip Blanchard, and Eric
Lamont added their ideas on where to look. I visited
Edgewood, the Dwarf Pine Plains, and the Peconic
River Headwaters with John Turner; Connetquot River

State Park with Bob McGrath; Cranberry Bog, South
Haven County Park, and Big Reed Pond with Joe Beitel;
Shu Swamp with Betty Lotowycz, Barbara Conolly, and
Carol Johnston; the Hempstead Plains with Carole
Neidich-Ryder; and Shadmoor with Larry Penny.

There were already many known sites for listed
rare species that had not yet been entered into the Heri-
tage database. There were well-known populations of
Pyxidanthera barbulata, Polygala lutea , Schi^aea pusilla, Pla-
tanthera cristata and P. ciliaris, Uatris scariosa, Tipularia dis-
color, and Drosera filiformis . There were also multiple oc-
currences for Helianthemum dumosum that we thought was
a globally rare species that would be listed as Endan-
gered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. At one
time, H. dumosum seemed to define the importance of
sites on the South Fork and even appeared on the lawns
of several Chapter trustees. Agalinis acuta was also a
celebrated species on Long Island. In 1983, Larry Penny
had located a population at Shadmoor, the first docu-
mented population outside Massachusetts in many
years. I visited all these sites and began to develop
search images for the target species.

The visits to coastal plain ponds, particularly
those in the Sag Harbor region, later called the Long
Pond Greenbelt, were successful. That first year, I relo-
cated populations of Coreopsis rosea, Eleochans equisetoides,
E. tuberculosa, Hypericum adpressum, Rhynchospora nitens, and
Eupatorium leucolepis , some of which had not been seen
or recorded in 75 years. Dick Mitchell was correct that
the Sag Harbor Ponds were worth a visit. That first
year, I saw coastal plain pond species that were emer-
gents or species that could live on the lower borders of
lawns that were damp along the pond margins. I con-
sidered recommending that the trees and shrubs be
cleared along ponds to enhance habitat for rare species.
I did not know at that time how these ponds functioned
or how botanically rich these site would be in other,
drier years.

That first fall I also found two new populations
of A.galinis acuta\ one at the Hempstead Plains and the
other at Montauk. By winter, there was a pile of over
one hundred populations of rare plants to document. I
had developed a card file of Long Island historical oc-
currences to seek and a full agenda for another year of
fieldwork. My contract was renewed for the second
year. I spent many days at the Planting Fields Arbore-
tum, the New York Botanical Garden, the Brooklyn
Botanical Garden, the New York State Museum, and a
few days at the Bailey Hortoreum and Grays to amass
data on rare plant sites and to become familiar with spe-
cies that I had not yet seen. I also used the Stanley
Smith DEC Region document to expand the rare spe-
cies list for Long Island. I added nearly 300 species to

(Continued on page 18)

Page 18

Long Island Botanical Society Vol. 16 No. 2

Photo Legend

(centerfold)

Photos taken on various LIBS Field Trips
between 1988 and 1991

1 Betty Lotowycz and John Turner

2 Bob Zaremba

3 (From left to right): George Talbert, Skip
Blanchard, Jane Blanchard, Rosalie Talbert,
Julius Hastings, Celia Hastings, Kerry Bar-
ringer, Bob Laskowski

4 Chris Mangels

5 Julius Hastings and Eric Lamont

6 Betty Lotowycz

7 Joe Beitel

8 Skip Blanchard and Elsa L'Hommedieu

9 Vince Puglisi

10 Al and Lois Lindberg

11 Eric Lamont

12 Carole Neidich-Ryder

13 Our photographer: Barbara Conolly

(Continued from page 15)

the New York tracking list.

In 1985, the water levels in the ponds were low
in early summer and very low by early fall. Some ponds
were completely dry. The previous summer I had
learned how to find many of the Long Island ponds in
the Peconic River Headwaters, the Calverton Ponds,
Sears Bellows Ponds, and the Long Pond Greenbelt.
That year, as I learned a new species that I had not seen
before, it was easy to cruise to multiple ponds and pick
up a series of occurrences. Several newly listed species,
including Xyris smalliana , Ty copus ample dans, and Scleria
reticularis , were quickly removed from the tracking list
because they were found in most ponds, were too com-
mon to document, and did not ultimately define the im-
portance of sites. Drosera filiformis also was located at
multiple sites and removed from the rare species list.
The most new occurrences that I picked up in one day
were 35, as I ran from pond to pond. These numbers
would later haunt me as I tried to fill out field forms
and sketch maps for each of these occurrences from
abbreviated field notes. I always enjoyed company on
these trips and benefited from what other people could
see.

The Founding of LIBS

That winter, a friend of mine from graduate
school, Margaret Conover, was at SUNY Stony Brook
and contacted me to see if I were interested in working
with her to develop a group of botanists from Long Is-
land to meet and share common interests. Margaret
offered the Museum of Long Island Natural Sciences at

Stony Brook University as a site for the first meeting.
We developed a list of people to invite, and contacted
them, inquiring about interests and availability. We be-
gan to meet monthly and to conduct field trips. A short
newsletter was sent out after each meeting. At first, I
compiled this newsletter. When Karene Motivans joined
TNC, she enthusiastically took over the newsletter, so
that for the first two years, TNC contributed not only
staff time to produce the newsletter, but the costs of
printing and postage as well. Eventually, die botanical
group decided to become a formal organization with
incorporation, officers, and by laws. We sought legal
help to fill out the forms for filing widi die State, but it
wasn’t until 1989, when we received a $300 anonymous
donation that we were able to incorporate as the Long
Island Botanical Society and receive the status of a not-
for-profit in New York. (Editor’s note: Through these early
years, Bob served as president of UBS.)

Continued Fieldwork

The botany group field trips continued and the
rare plant forms piled up. Joe Beitel found a new
Agalinis population in Bellport and Bob Laskowski
helped locate another on the Sayville FAA property. I
located a third new Agalinis population that year by
checking on a 1971 specimen collected by Betty
Lotowycz, again in Bellport. I looked at dozens of
Agalinis populations that year and followed up on nu-
merous leads. Most of these sites supported A. setacea,
A. paupercula, os A. purpurea, but Long Island now had
six populations of a species then known from only 10
populations worldwide.

Joe Beitel was an important link to Long Island
natural historians. He was a student of Art Cooley and
Dennis Puleston and learned sites and species from
people who knew the Island over the past 40 years.
Bob Laskowski was even more amazing. He had visited
the Hempstead Plains with Stanley Cain, who described
the thousands of acres of grasslands in the 1930s. Joe
and Bob and Betty and all those who studied early Long
Island writings and looked at herbarium specimens were
a part of the passing down of natural history informa-
tion that we all need to tell the biodiversity story of a
place.

It was a time when it seemed like plants were im-
portant and defined priorities for numerous acquisition
projects. Over a thousand occurrences of rare plants
were documented on Long Island. It was during this
early period that many sites were brought into conserva-
tion ownership: Barcelona Neck, Hither Hills and Ram
Level, The Dwarf Pine Plains, and Calverton Ponds.
There were new additions to the Peconic River Head-
waters, Sears Bellows County Park, and Cranberry Bog.

(Continued on page 19)

Long Island Botanical Society Vol. 16 No. 2

Page 19

(Continued from page 18)

The concept of the Long Pond Greenbelt was devel-
oped. The Hempstead Plains was elevated in impor-
tance for the Nassau Community College. The ground-
work was laid for later acquisitions at Shadmoor and
Shinnecock Hills.

My duties on Long Island continued for two
more years, expanding to include what we called “site
design” and stewardship planning, as well as a continua-
tion of Heritage fieldwork. Years after I left Long Is-
land, David Hunt, who worked in my office, spent parts
of his workweek keying old Long Island material col-
lected during this time. Many additional occurrences
were added to the Heritage database from these collec-
tions.

Upcoming
Programs

May 9, 2006* Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.

Bob Zaremba: “The 1984-85 Field Seasons
on Long Island.”

Bob worked in conjunction with TNC and the New
York Natural Heritage Program and collected exten-
sively on Long Island. His search for rare plants built
a base of information on distribution and natural
communities that helped gain momentum and enthu-
siasm in the local flora. Informal meetings and discus-
sions in this time frame were the groundwork for the
formal formation of LIBS. Please join us in welcom-
ing back our special guest speaker at the 20th Anni-
versary Meeting of LIBS.

Location: Museum of Long Island Natural Sciences,

Earth and Space Science Building,

Gil Hanson Room (Room 123)

SUNY at Stony Brook, Stony Brook

June 13, 2006 Tuesday, 5:30 p.m.

(Please note early start time for the barbecue)

Annual Barbecue

The annual barbecue, featuring Chef Eric's made-to-
order hot dogs and hamburgers. Salads, deviled eggs,
desserts, etc., gladly accepted. The traditional loca-
tion — on the green behind the Muttontown Preserve
meeting house.

Location: Bill Paterson Nature Center,

Muttontown Preserve, East Norwich

* Refreshments and informal talk begin at 7:30 p.m.
Formal meeting starts at 8:00 p.m.

Returning to Long Island

After I relocated to Albany, I continued to visit
Long Island for the next 14 years as an employee of
TNC in Albany and finally in Boston. In 2005, I re-
turned to Long Island as a contract botanist to docu-
ment some of the rare plants that I had found in the
mid-1980s. Many of the sites were much the same: the
Peconic River Headwaters Ponds, Calverton Ponds, and
the Long Pond Greenbelt. Phragmtes has expanded at
Linus Pond, Northwest Harbor, and Cranberry Bog,
but has disappeared from two areas at Long Pond
where TNC has been working.

There is a question that we all know: If a tree
falls in the forest and there are no people around, does
it make a noise? For me, there is an obvious answer.
Yes, of course, there is a noise. The squirrels and birds
have ears. The fallen tree matters without anyone
knowing that it is there. It lives and dies and provides
habitat for other species and is part of a complex com-
munity. It does not require people to make it impor-
tant. But for conservation of the tree and the associated
species, it takes people. People to document the exis-
tence and importance of the tree. People to tell the sto-
ries of the tree to others and convince them, argue with
them if needed, that the tree is important and has a
place with people.

LIBS tells the story of the tree and hundreds of
other plants that make Long Island what it is. We are
part of a long tradition of people who document species
and share details of why our natural areas are important.
I am pleased and proud to have been a part of LIBS and
the telling of the Long Island story, and know that the
plant stories will need to be told many more times by
many people to keep biological diversity a vital part of
life on Long Island. ♦♦♦

Dr. Robert Zaremba is a botanical consultant and
lives on Cape Cod with his wife Danielle.

And don’t miss...

Alive in New York, A Growing Invasion, pre-
sented by the Garvies Point Museum and Pre-
serve. You have only to the end of April to catch
the exhibit. Alive in New York contains 43
works from 29 artists of the New York chapter of
the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators. The ex-
hibit focuses on the spread of non-native plants
from cultivation and accidental introduction to our
state’s ecosystems. To view the gallery of images,
visit http:/ /www.science-art.com/member.asp?
id=121. Garvies Point is located at 50 Barry
Drive, Glen Cove, New York.

Page 20

Long Island Botanical Society Vol. 16 No. 2

Field Trips

Saturday, April 22, 2006, 9:30-11:30 a.m.

Games Point Museum & Preserve, Glen Cove, New York
Trip leader: Lois Lindberg

Lois has invited us to join her and others on a two-hour
hike through Games Point Preserve to discover the dif-
ference between weeds and wildflowers. Find out which
cultivated plants can spread throughout nearby woods
and meadows, causing botanical havoc, and identify
some native alternatives. This walk was scheduled to
coincide with “Alive in New York: A Growing Inva-
sion,” a traveling exhibit of botanical art now on display
in Garvies Point Museum. Fee: $2.00 per person in-
cludes Museum admission after the field trip. Please call
Lois for information and to register for the walk.

Directions: From the LIE or Northern State
Parkway, exit to Glen Cove Road, North. Take Glen
Cove Road north. When it becomes Glen Cove Bypass,
bear left at fork, and continue to last traffic light at the
end of road, facing the Glen Cove Fire House. Turn
right and follow directional signs.

Saturday, April 29, 2006, 10 a.m.

Van Cortlandt Park, Bronx, New York
Trip leader: David Kunstler

We will visit Northwest Forest with Dutchman's-
breeches ( Dicentra cucullaria ), early wood violet ( Viola
palmata ) and New York rare wild pink ( Silene caroliniand)-,
and also Vault Flill Meadow and Tibbetts Brook system
(VC Swamp). Bring lunch. This is a joint trip with the
Torrey Botanical Society.

Directions: From the Major Deegan Express-
way, take the Van Cortlandt Park South exit, go west to
Broadway, right to 246th Street area (just beyond the
“el”) and park. Meet at Van Cortland Park Nature Cen-
ter inside the 246th Street entrance behind Van Cort-
land house— bear left.

Saturday, May 13, 2006, 10 A.M.

Kings Point Park, Kings Point, Nassau County, New York

Trip leaders: Andy Greller and Skip Blanchard
Last November we had an ad hoc trip to this site, which
was announced in our meetings and on our Web site,
but was not planned in time for the LIBS newsletter.
We liked the place enough that we wanted to revisit it
this spring, hoping to coax out a few spring ephemerals.
Bring at least something to snack on. It’s hard to know
when we will finish. The more courageous among us

may want to get our feet muddy and/ or wet.

Directions: Find your way to Middle Neck
Road* in Kings Point and proceed north to Redbrook
Road, a left. Turn onto Redbrook and continue about
0.6 mile the park entrance on the left, opposite Cherry
Lane.

*You can find Middle Neck Road from Route
25 A in Thomaston, or via Lakeville Road going north,
either from the Northern State Parkway Exit 25, or
from the LIE Exit 33, Community Drive. If you are
coming from the east, rather than taking Community
Drive, continue west on the North Service Road to
Lakeville Road.

Saturday, June 3, 2006, 9:30 a.m.

Underhill Property, carpoolingfrom Muttontown Preserve,
Muttontown Vane, East Norwich, New York
Trip Leader: A1 Lindberg

This trip is limited to 20 participants, and preregistra-
tion is required. Please call A1 Lindberg for details.

Sitting atop the Jericho Moraine, the Underhill
Property comprises 50+ acres of rolling fields in varying
stages of succession, kettlehole ponds, and woodland
margins. This preserve was recently acquired by Nassau
County, New York State, and the Town of Oyster Bay.
We will visit the property with an eye towards develop-
ing a plant survey for the site.

Directions: As there is no public access to the
Underhill Property, we will meet at 9:30 a.m. at the Bill
Paterson Nature Center, Muttontown Preserve. We will
carpool to the site and park on private property with
landowner permission for this trip.

Take Route 106 North from the LIE or North-
ern State Parkway for approximately three miles. Turn
left (west) onto Route 25A (Northern Boulevard). Make
the first left onto Muttontown Lane. The Nature Center
parking lot is at the end of the road.

Join LIBS today!

Annual Membership is $20 payable to:

Long Island Botanical Society

Mail your dues to:

Lois Lindberg
Membership Chairperson

Letters to the Editor, Articles, and News

Margaret Conover
Long Island Botanical Society
PO Box 507; Aquebogue, NY 11931