Vascular Plants of North Carolina

Account for Common Ground-pine - Dendrolycopodium obscurum (L.) A. Haines

Section 1 » Family Lycopodiaceae

Author	(L.) A. Haines
Distribution	Throughout the Mountains; present over most of the Piedmont and parts of the western Coastal Plain, ranging east to Gates, Pitt, and Bladen counties. This is a Northeastern species, ranging from eastern Canada to WI, south to SC, GA, and northeastern AL.
Abundance	Fairly common to common in the Mountains; rare to uncommon in most of the Piedmont, most numerous in the foothills and also near the Fall Line; rare to quite uncommon in the western half of the Coastal Plain; rare in the Sandhills proper.
Habitat	This is a species of acidic forests, usually where somewhat moist, and often under pines and other conifers, less so in hardwood forests. It can also grow in bogs and damp thickets.
Phenology	Fruits from July to September.
Identification	This evergreen herb has a long stem that sends up vertical branches, which tend to be branched several other times, to form a somewhat "bushy" looking plant with several horizontal layers of branchlets, the entire plant reaching 6-10 inches tall. These branchlets are densely covered in small, scale-like leaves, in ranks of 6 or 8, and strongly ascending, with a sharp point. The strobili are at the ends of several of the branches, about 1.5 inches long, and quite erect, pale green in color --lighter in color than the rich green of the leaves. D. hickeyi is very similar (and was formerly included within D. obscurum), but the leaves of that species are somewhat more closely appressed or angled upward and the spread of the branchlet (with leaves) is about 3.5-6 mm wide, as opposed to 6-9 mm wide in D. obscurum. Also, the abaxial (lower) leaves of the horizontal branchlets are about the same length as the lateral leaves in D. hickeyi, whereas those leaves in D. obscurum are only half to two-thirds the length of the lateral leaves. That species grows only at high elevations on grassy balds, ridgetop forests, and a few other high elevation places in NC. You may need to check keys for further separation; but in general the branchlets of this species are more flattened owing to shorter top and bottom leaves, whereas D. hickeyi has more rounded branchlets owing to all leaves about the same size.
Taxonomic Comments	This species was formerly named as Lycopodium obscurum, or when D. hickeyi was included, then this taxon was named as L. obscurum var. obscurum.
Other Common Name(s)	Eastern Tree-clubmoss, Rare Clubmoss (a bizarre name), Prince's-pine
State Rank	S4
Global Rank	G5
State Status
US Status
USACE-agcp	FACU link
USACE-emp	FACU link

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