Author: Karen B. Searcy, Biology Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 01003

Photographs by Terry Blunt, Peter Westover

Conservation Works LLC and Karen. B. Searcy

About the Flora of Mount Holyoke project:

The Mount Holyoke Range is an east-west tending basalt ridge in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts. It extends approximately 10 km east from the Connecticut River in the Towns of Amherst, Belchertown, Granby, Hadley and South Hadley. Elevations range from 150 to 300 m. Recently the Mount Holyoke Range and immediately adjacent undeveloped area (the greater Mount Holyoke Range) was identified as one of the Core Natural Habitats in the region.

The key includes many of the common herbaceous plants found blooming in the range between 15 April and 1 June. Information about each species includes a brief description, flowering dates, habitat, and localities where it can found. Many of the early spring flowers can be seen on a walk up Mount Holyoke in Skinner State Park or along the Metacomet- Monadnock trail up Bare Mountain or Mt. Norwottock.

The picture key is part of a larger project on the flora of the Greater Mount Holyoke Range. This flora and an electronic field guide that will include additional common plants of the area will be available in late 2007. A check list of the 861 taxa observed in the Greater Mt. Holyoke Range between August 1999 and September 2006 is available at http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/herbarium/checklist.phtml.

Photographs are covered under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License. Please credit Terry Blunt (TB) Peter Westover (PW) or Karen B. Searcy (KBS) as the photographers. All other uses please contact Karen B. Searcy.

Acknowledgements:

We thank Jennifer Forman Orth for her enthusiasm and support throughout the project. Steve Johnson helped process the photographs. We also thank the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation for a special use permit, and the Towns of Hadley and South Hadley as well as a number of private landowners for permission to access to their property. The project was funded in part by grants from the Friends of the Mount Holyoke Range and the Jane Hallenbeck Bemis Endowment for Research in Natural History to KBS.

The picture key and species lists are generated using the Electronic Field Guide software developed by the Biodiversity and Ecoinformatics Laboratory at UMass Boston.