Vascular plant biodiversity of Katannilik Territorial Park and Kimmirut and vicinity, Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada: an annotated checklist of an Arctic flora

• Main Authors: Saarela,Jeff, Sokoloff,Paul, Gillespie,Lynn, Bull,Roger
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: Pensoft Publishers 2022
• Subjects: J. Dewey Soper; floristics; herbarium specimens; Soper River; Canadian Heritage River; Nicholas Polunin; M. Oscar Malte; Arctic; Baffin Island; Canada; Canadian Arctic Archipelago; Dewey; Fontana; Kimmirut; Nunavut; Arctic Archipelago; Baffin; Climate change; Erigeron eriocephalus; Eriophorum; Eriophorum scheuchzeri; Honckenya peploides; Luzula groenlandica
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3897/arphapreprints.e90704; https://preprints.arphahub.com/article/90704/

The Arctic ecozone is undergoing rapid and major change in response to climate change. Establishing a baseline of current Arctic vascular plant diversity and distribution is necessary to be able to track changes in species composition over time due to climate change. Here, we report the results of a floristic study of vascular plant diversity of Katannilik Territorial Park and Kimmirut and vicinity on southern Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Nunavut, Canada. The study area is located within Circumpolar Arctic Bioclimate Subzone D. The study is based on a dataset comprising 1571 collections from the study area gathered over the last century, including 838 collections we made during fieldwork in 2012. We present the results in an annotated checklist. The vascular plant flora of the study area comprises 34 families, 98 genera, 210 species, three nothospecies, and seven infraspecific taxa. We recorded 190 species, five infraspecific taxa, and two nothospecies from Katannilik Territorial Park and 162 species, five infraspecific taxa, and two nothospecies from Kimmirut. We newly record 46 species and one infraspecific taxon in 21 families from the study area, including 11 taxa (prefaced by an asterisk) we reported in an earlier publication: Erigeron eriocephalus, Taraxacum holmenianum (Asteraceae), Draba arctica, D. fladnizensis, D. corymbosa, D. lactea (Brassicaceae), *Arenaria longipedunculata, Honckenya peploides subsp. diffusa, Sabulina rossii, Silene uralensis (Rupr.) Bocquet subsp. uralensis, Viscaria alpina (Caryophyllaceae), *Carex brunnescens subsp. brunnescens, C. microglochin, C. krausei, C. subspathacea, Eriophorum scheuchzeri subsp. arcticum (Cyperaceae), *Andromeda polifolia, *Orthilia secunda subsp. obtusata (Ericaceae), Oxytropis podocarpa (Fabaceae), *Triglochin palustris (Juncaginaceae), *Utricularia ochroleuca (Lentibulariaceae), Luzula groenlandica (new to the Canadian Arctic Archipelago), Huperzia continentalis (Lycopodiaceae), Montia fontana (Montiaceae), Hippuris lanceolata, H. ...