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Plant Profile

Pineland Blackanthers (Melanthera parvifolia)

Sachem skipper butterfly visiting flowers of pineland blackanthers (Melanthera parvifolia) at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden nursery ex situ conservation living collection.

Photo Credit: Lydia Cuni

Global Rank: G2 - Imperiled
Legal Status: N/A
Family: Asteraceae
State: FL
Nature Serve ID: 128149
Lifeform: Forb/herb
Date Inducted in National Collection: 02/25/2022

Description:

Where is Pineland Blackanthers (Melanthera parvifolia) located in the wild?

States & Provinces:

Pineland Blackanthers can be found in Florida

Which CPC Partners conserve Pineland Blackanthers (Melanthera parvifolia)?

Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden

Not Sponsored

Conservation Actions

Assigned 11/17/21

National Laboratory for Genetic Resource Preservation (USDA-ARS)

Not Sponsored

Conservation Actions

Assigned 11/17/21

CPC's Plant Sponsorship Program provides long term stewardship of rare plants in our National Collection. We are so grateful for all our donors who have made the Plant Sponsorship Program so successful. We are in the process of acknowledging all our wonderful plant sponsorship donors on our website. This is a work in progress and will be updated regularly.

Conservation Actions

Nicholas Matsumoto

11/20/2024

In March of 2023 the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden conservation team had a unique opportunity to rescue hundreds of endemic pine-rockland plants from a development site in southern Miami-Dade County before the land was cleared for another housing development. Among the taxa recovered was the Pineland blackanthers (Melanthera parvifolia). Fifty-four plants were saved from the site and grown out in our nursery space. In September through December, we harvested the crop by carefully tipping the dried inflorescences into envelopes, dropping the seeds inside. When processing was completed in early 2024 we had gathered around 18,500 seeds, allowing the population to be safeguarded in long-term storage. We will also propagate plants for native plant gardens, as this excellent butterfly-attractant is rarely available for sale, even at native plant nurseries .

Tina Stanley

05/11/2023

According to a March 2023 extract of the Florida Plant Rescue Database, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden holds 17 accessions of Melanthera parvifolia totalling approximately 6528 seeds representing 76 maternal lines.

Katie Heineman

11/17/2021

Seed from the 2021 seed collection of Melanthera parvifolia made by Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden are back-uped for safety duplication the National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation.

Lydia Cuni

11/15/2021

Pineland blackanthers (Melanthera parvifolia) is an endemic herbaceous plant in South Florida pine rocklands and is state listed as threatened. The species was described in 1903 by John Kunkel Small based on a specimen from Big Pine Key in Monroe County. It is predominantly in Miami-Dade and Collier Counties.

As part of the CPC’s new Florida Biobanking Initiative, Fairchild’s Conservation Team collected seeds of this species from a large, stable population in Zoo Miami’s pine rockland. The pineland had recently experienced a prescribed burn (<2 years) and was in excellent condition with many herbaceous plant species flowering, especially the pineland blackanthers.

This species is in the composite or sunflower family where flowers develop in clusters of disk florets arranged like a starburst, with new florets emerging from the center and older florets at the margins. Seeds of this species were collected over two days in September and October 2021. We used drawstring organza bags to maximize seed collection efforts since this species develops inflorescences continuously over several months. We first hand-collected ripe seedheads while bagging developing infructescences, then returning later to collect ripened seeds in the bags.

Melanthera parvifolia flowers in Zoo Miami's pine rockland, October 2021. Photo by Lydia Cuni.

Wild-collected Melanthera parvifolia seeds viewed under a stereo microscope. Photo by Lydia Cuni.