There’s a plant similar to hibiscus that’s native to Giles County called The Peter’s Mountain Mallow, but there are only a handful still alive. Two researchers at Virginia Tech are working with a team of undergraduate students to protect the plant from extinction.
The Peter’s Mountain Mallow (scientific name Iliamna corei) is federally listed as endangered. “It’s a circular flower; it’s kind of pink,” describes Leighton Reid, an associate professor of ecological restoration at Virginia Tech. “In full sunlight the plant can grow up to six feet high.”
Last year, Reid and several of his students joined a team of scientists with the Department of Natural Resources and The Nature Conservancy who traveled to the only known location for the mallow, near the Appalachian Trail in Giles County on Virginia's western edge.
“We went up and counted all of the plants. We did a systematic survey,” Reid said. “And there were only five plants. That’s it.”
The plants they saw weren’t flowering or producing seeds. A decade ago, there were more than 100 plants at this location.
Deer eat mallow, so several years ago, conservationists built fences to keep them away from the plants. When Leighton and his students visited, they discovered leaves had accumulated in the cages, smothering many of the plants. Leighton’s students designed a special lid to keep leaves out of the exclosures, which hopefully will protect the five remaining plants.
The seeds also germinate best with fire, and there have been prescribed burns in the area, but Reid said the last one was in 2017.
Peter’s Mountain Mallow were first described by botanists in 1927. At that time, this location used to be a grassy field. Today the forest has grown up with shade, which Reid said may be one reason the plant isn’t thriving.
“It’s pretty neat that ecological restoration students are getting to really contribute the preservation or a globally unique species that’s so badly endangered and also is just right here in our own backyard,” Reid said.
One of the students, Nisha Polk, is working with geoscience professor Rachel Reid to analyze soil core samples from the site to find out what the landscape here looked like hundreds of years ago.
There are seeds stored in a seed bank in North Carolina and there used to be experimental plots of the plant growing at Virginia Tech. Reid is hoping to restart those plots, to learn more about how to protect this critically endangered plant from extinction.
