A Bibliography of North Carolina Local Floras Michael W. Denslow, 1 * Michael W. Palmer, 2 and Zack E. Murrell 1 1 Department of Biology, Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina 28608 2 Department of Botany, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma 74078 ABSTRACT Vascular plant checklists (floras) supply key information for biodiversity studies by providing a comprehensive picture of the floristic composition of a specific study area. A bibliography of floras conducted within the state of North Carolina was compiled. Eighty-six floras were completed within North Carolina between the years 1834 and 2009. Floras conducted in North Carolina cover areas of varying size, from small islands and state parks to entire counties. These studies include journal articles, government publications, technical reports and Master’s theses. More than half of the flora citations were not published in scientific journals and were often difficult to discover or obtain. INTRODUCTION The objective of this pa- per is to provide a list of floras conducted within the state of North Carolina. North Carolina has a long history of botanical exploration and subsequent publication (e.g., Croom 1837, Curtis 1867, Chapman 1883, Small and Heller 1892, Small 1933, Radford et al. 1968, Weakley 2008). In fact, the oldest herbarium in the United States, Salem College founded in 1820, is located within the state (Thiers 2009). Compilations of botanical literature for a specific geograph- ic area can be extremely valuable to the botanical community (Bates 1985, Jones et al. 2007, Palmer 2007). Several publications have provided botanical bibliographic infor- mation relevant to the state of North Carolina (Egler 1961, Hardin and DuMond 1971, DeYoung et al. 1982, Wofford and White 1981, White 1982, Matthews and Mellichamp 1989, Burk 2006, Weakley 2008); however, only one of these focused specifically on the state (Hardin and DuMond 1971). Hardin and DuMond (1971) listed numerous publications relevant to the identification of plants (in- cluding fungi, bryophytes and algae) and few floras (vascular plant checklists) were includ- ed. Floras provide valuable information for broad-scale biodiversity analyses (Palmer 2005, Kreft et al. 2007, Qian et al. 2007), and an important reference for botanists and ecologists in the field. MATERIALS AND METHODS The first step in procuring the floras was to define our criteria for inclusion. For the purposes of this bibliography, a flora is a list of plants for a given area (sensu, Lawrence 1951, Palmer et al. 1995). The author of the flora must have intended for the list to be complete. Despite containing the word flora in the title, some publications were not intended by the author to be complete checklists (e.g., Craigmile 1922, McCurdy 1975, Wyatt and Fowler 1977), and such publications were excluded from this bibliography. If a list was restricted taxonomically (e.g., Poaceae excluded), or seasonally (e.g., spring flora, Glasson 1934, Palmer 1970) it was also excluded from the present list. Plot based ecological studies were also excluded, though they may contain plant data. Thus, we excluded literature containing partial floristic inventories in order to maintain clear and consistent criteria for the bibliography. Finally, the area circumscribed must have been unambiguous and the study location clearly stated. If the area in terms of size and geographic location is not clearly stated it can severely limit the usefulness of a flora for two reasons. First, the number of species in a given list is strongly determined by its size (Rosenzweig 1995). For this reason, compara- tive research is difficult without an accurate *email address: md68135@appstate.edu Received March 12, 2010; Accepted April 26, 2010. CASTANEA 75(4): 475–483. DECEMBER 2010 475