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Plant Profile

Curtiss' Loosestrife (Lythrum curtissii)

Lythrum curtissii in bloom in Florida. Ruler for scale with very small flowers.

Photo Credit: Eric M Powell

Global Rank: G2 - Imperiled
Legal Status: N/A
Family: Lythraceae
State: FL, GA
Nature Serve ID: 140454
Lifeform: Forb/herb, Subshrub
Date Inducted in National Collection: 04/22/2024

Description:

Where is Curtiss' Loosestrife (Lythrum curtissii) located in the wild?

States & Provinces:

Curtiss' Loosestrife can be found in Florida, Georgia

Which CPC Partners conserve Curtiss' Loosestrife (Lythrum curtissii)?

The Jones Center at Ichauway

Not Sponsored

Conservation Actions

Assigned 04/22/24

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

Lisa Giencke

11/15/2024

Curtiss’s loosestrife (Lythrum curtissii) is a globally imperiled species that grows in southwest Georgia and the Florida panhandle. The Jones Center Plant Ecology lab had the opportunity to survey several sites in Franklin County, Florida and found several populations of Curtiss’s loosestrife. During our surveys we documented over 100 individuals in one population! In October 2024 we made a maternal line collection (which essentially means we marked which plants we collected from and so that we can trace the seeds collected back to an individual plant) from 50 plants sampled from the largest population. We collected 10-20 capsules per plant depending on how large the plant was. After collecting the seeds, we processed them so they could be seed-banked where they can later be used for restoration projects; so far, we have processed over 5,800 seeds! Half of these will be sent to the National Laboratory for Genetic Resource Preservation, and the other half will remain in our conservation seed bank.

In addition to exciting surveys and collections, we have conducted lots of germination tests on Curtiss’s loosestrife to see what it requires to break dormancy and germinate. Tests from previous years had yielded little success, even with the use of gibberellic acid. This year we decided to conduct 12 different trials, and tested different variables-and combinations of variables-that the seeds may experience in nature. We tested flooding, an alternating day and night light/temperature regime using a growth chamber, cold stratification ranging from 30 to 90 days, and combinations of these variables. What we found was that the seeds overwhelmingly thrived under an alternating day and night light/temperature regime and reached over 80% total germination when placed in the growth chamber! Other combinations of variables such as flooding and the growth chamber, or cold stratification and the growth chamber, did experience marginal increases in total germination and rate of germination, but none that were statistically significant. We are still conducting these experiments, but the initial results seem to conclude that the seeds need this alternating day and night regime to break dormancy.

- By Luke Barnes, November 14, 2024