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["Brungardt, Sam" <Sam.Brungardt@state.mn.us>]

Title: Grant Awarded to save rare plant

For more info about Ziziphus celata, see http://www.archbold-station.org/abs/plantspp/ziziphus.htm . -- Sam
Published Monday, September 20, 2004
Grant Awarded to Save Rare Plant
The Nature Conservancy gets $40,870 to preserve the Florida ziziphus.

By Tom Palmer
The Ledger

LAKE WALES -- Federal wildlife officials have awarded a $40,870 grant to The Nature Conservancy to aid in the preservation of one of the rarest plants on the Lake Wales Ridge.

The U.S. Department of Interior grant involves an effort to establish plots containing the Florida ziziphus at the conservancy's 5,000-acre Tiger Creek Preserve near Babson Park.

The project will be a joint effort that also will involve Archbold Biological Station in Lake Placid, Historic Bok Sanctuary and the Florida Museum of Natural History Laboratory of Molecular Systematics and Evolutionary Genetics in Gainesville.

The award is part of the department's Private Stewardship Grant Program. This year, the program will provide $1.3 million in federal assistance to private landowners or groups that undertake conservation to benefit endangered, threatened, candidate, proposed and at-risk species.

The ziziphus plan was chosen from more than $10 million worth of project proposals considered for funding.

"Since nonfederal lands provide at least 80 percent of needed habitat for half of the nation's threatened and endangered species, private landowners have great influence over the future of some of our most critically imperiled species," said Sam D. Hamilton, southeast region director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Florida ziziphus, also known as Florida jujube, is a twisted and thorny shrub that grows up to 8 feet tall. It has pale yellow, lilacscented flowers and juicy berries.

It was first discovered on the Lake Wales Ridge in 1948. It was later declared extinct, but was rediscovered in 1987.

However, five of the six known remaining populations are incapable of producing viable fruit.

Tricia Martin, the conservancy's Lake Wales Ridge program director, said the project's goal is to establish a self-sustaining wild population of these plants at Tiger Creek.

Martin said ziziphus is not known to occur at Tiger Creek, but there's some historical evidence it may have occurred there.

She said the project will involve site preparation that will include prescribed fire.

The seedlings will be nurtured with irrigation and surrounded by protective cages to keep them from being damaged.

Martin said the initial plantings should be completed by next September.

That will be followed by a longterm monitoring program, she said.

Tom Palmer can be reached at tom.palmer@theledger.com or 863-802-7535.