CHAPTER IV: WILDLIFE HABITATS FOR MISSISSIPPI’S SGCN,
THREATS AND CONSERVATION ACTIONS^1648.1 Pitcherplant Flat/Bogs
Value to SGCN - 44
Rank - 21st of 29 Inland Terrestrial Complexes
(Terrestrial, Wetland, Subterranean and Anthropogenic)DESCRIPTION
Herb, quaking and shrub bogs are often sandy or mucky
seepage areas that, due to their wetness and exposure to fire,
remain treeless or nearly so. Wet, acidic, anoxic conditions
of the substrates prevent trees from encroaching and the ones that do are often stunted. Quaking bogs
have deep organic, mucky soils occasionally reaching depths greater than six feet. They are called
quaking because they "tremble" under foot traffic. These bogs often have a thick layer of slowly
decomposing peat (Sphagnum).
Bog communities have an exceptionally diverse flora and some contain endemic crawfish and a variety
of other invertebrate species. Clubmosses, bracken fern and several other plant species that occur at
spring seeps are typically found in bogs. Some of the more consistently represented species include
plants from the aster, orchid, yelloweyed grass, pitcherplant, sundew, pipewort and butterwort families.
Yellow trumpet pitcherplant, tenangle pipewort, goldencrest, water cowbane, one flowered
honeycombhead, rayless goldenrod, chaffhead, deathcamus, pink sundew, false asphodel, yellow
meadowbeauty, milkwort and many others are sprinkled among a diverse mixture of grasses and sedges.
The large variety of graminoids include many beaksedges, longleaf threeawn, toothachegrass, purple
silky scale, nutrushes and muhly, bluestem and panic grasses, among many others add to the diversity of
bogs.
Important bog shrubs are coastal sweetpepperbush, large gallberry, inkberry, myrtle dahoon, bayberries
and blueberries; bog trees, including sweetbay, blackgum, slash pine and pond cypress, take on a
shrubby form with a few scattered, stunted, tree-sized individuals.
LOCATION, SIZE, CONDITION AND CONSERVATION STATUS
EGCP, UEGCP
Pitcher plant flats/bogs are embedded within the longleaf pine ecosystem where
soils become periodically saturated and there is an influx of moisture from
uplands. They occur in a variety of sizes (one to one hundred acres),
landscapes, and slope positions. There are about 10,000 acres of this habitat
remaining in Mississippi.
There has been a 97 percent loss of pitcher plant bogs along the Gulf Coast.
The U.S. Forest Service has a management policy of controlled burns to
Range of Pitcherplant/
Flat bogs