A new species of wildflower has been formally described this
week in the latest issue of Phytoneuron. You might expect new
botanical discoveries to be from an unexplored tropical jungle,
but this wildflower is found in the Piedmont of North Carolina.
You might also expect that living for so long in such a
populated area without being formally described would mean this
plant could only be appreciated by a botanist with a hand lens,
but that is not the case. This new wildflower is a strikingly
beautiful species of Barbara’s-buttons. A goldenrod crab spider
hunts for prey on the newly described Oak Barrens
Barbara’s-buttons. You might also be surprised to learn this is
not that unusual, and there are other plants in North Carolina,
just as spectacular, that have only been recently described. One
summer evening in 2007, after a thunderstorm, I was standing on
the porch of an historic house in Beaufort, North Carolina with
Misty Buchanan, a botanist with the North Carolina Natural
Heritage Program. We were there w