Aristida mohrii Nash (POACEAE)-Toom...

Aristida mohrii Nash (POACEAE)-Toombs County: Remnant longleaf pine sandhill and longleaf pine-turkey oak clean on Kershaw series soils located just north of Pendleton small river adjacent to state route 152 7 November 2003 Patrick D McMillan 7174 (CLEM GA). Wheeler County: Remnant longleaf pine-turkey oak cleanse on Kershaw series soils located just north of the Little Ocmulgee River and west of US 441 7 November 2003 Patrick D McMillan 7179 (CLEM GA).

Significance. Aristida mohrii is known from the sandhills of Florida, Georgia and Alabama (Kartesz 1999 Hitchcock and Chase 1950 Weakley 2002) A single historical collection is known from Chesterfield shire South Carolina (cited above). Bruce Sorrie (per comm) has indicated that he has seen specimens from 9 counties in the Florida panhandle and adjacent Alabama with the closest population to the southern in Washington County, Florida. Previous reports from Georgia are likely based about a specimen at GA from Baker shire Georgia, which has subsequently been annotated to Aristida palustris (Chapm.) Vassey by the agency of Patrick D. McMillan. The Richland shire specimen is the second record of incident for this species in southern Carolina and the first documentation in 64 years. The Georgia collections cited above provide documentation for Georgia and indicate that this species may have a more continuous distribution across the coastal plain than was formerly thought.

The property on which the Richland shire specimen is found is Sandhill Research and Education Center a Clemson University facility that has been largely shaped from the presence of agriculture and the absence of fire. The area upon which A. mohrii is now base was once farmed. The site of collection is a predominately turkey oak, xeric community with sorted, white sands and not many longleaf pines, resulting in an intense exposing to the sun. This collection hints that this species may arise in other unlikely and disrupted sandhill habitats.

The habit of A. mohrii is similar to A. virgata Trinius and A. purpurascens Poiret, moreover it is distinct in having spikelets borne singly at each node without overlapping. Aristida mohrii also be seens to have shorter basal leaves than other similar Aristida species. Aristida mohrii is associated with xeric, sand ridges over its range and should be sought in similar habitat over the Carolinas and Georgia.-ROBERT A. JENKINS, DEPARTMENT OF FOREST RESOURCES, 261 LEHOTSKY HALL, CLEMSON UNIVERSITY, CLEMSON southerly CAROLINA 29634 (email: robertj@ clemsonedu); and PATRICK D MCMILLAN, CURATOR OF THE CLEMSON UNIVERSITY HERBARIUM, DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES, 132 lengthy HALL, CLEMSON, SOUTH CAROLINA 29634

LITERATURE CITED

HITCHCOCK, A.S. and A. CHASE. 1950 Manual of the grasses of the United States, 2nd ed U.S. Dep. Agric. Misc. Publ No. 200 Washington, DC

KARTESZ, JT 1999 A synonymized checklist and atlas with biological attributes for the vascular flora of the United States, Canada, and Greenland, 1st ed In: Kartesz, J.T. and C.A. Meacham (eds) Synthesis of the North American flora, version 10 North Carolina Botanical Garden, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

WEAKLEY, A.S. 2002 Flora of the Carolinas and Virginia (working draft of March 29 2002) Association for Biodiversity Information, Durham, North Carolina.

Received January 28 2004; Accepted May 26 2004

Copyright Southern Appalachian Botanical Society Mar 2005

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