Vascular plants

The 2021-2 survey conducted by the NCBP of the New Hope Creek corridor in Durham County included the Hollow Rock Nature Park but focused primarily on the floodplain habitats along the creek itself. An upland area located east of Pickett Road was noted, however, for the maturity of its stand and its somewhat unusual composition, with a large number of Shortleaf Pines and Post Oaks intermixed with Northern Shagbark Hickories and Florida Maples. In 2024, Steve Hall and Carol Tingley conducted a more detailed habitat analysis of this site in a project funded by the Durham Open Space Program.

The survey described in this report was a follow-up to a larger biodiversity inventory conducted by the NCBP in the Durham County portion of the New Hope Creek floodplain in 2021 and 2022. The current study focuses much more narrowly on mapping the distributions within the New Hope floodplain of two of its rarest species, Big Shellbark Hickory (Carya laciniosa), and the White-nymph (Trepocarpus aethusae), both of which appear to have their best (or only, in the case of the White-nymph) populations in the state along New Hope Creek.

Biological collections are uniquely poised to inform the stewardship of life on Earth in a time of cataclysmic biodiversity loss. Efforts to fully leverage collections are impeded by a lack of trained taxonomists and a lack of interest and engagement by the public. We provide a model of a crowd‐sourced data collection project that produces quality taxonomic data sets and empowers citizen scientists through real contributions to science. Entitled MicroPlants, the project is a collaboration between taxonomists, citizen science experts, and teachers and students from universities and K–12.