Decades ago, in the 1980s, two botanists working along the Eastern Shore wetlands of Maryland discovered a rare, grassy plant with rust-colored spikelets.
The plant, known as the mid-Atlantic beaksedge, was recently declared threatened and endangered by the state’s Department of Natural Resources. It joined the list of endangered and rare plants this year, alongside seven others.
The beaksedge can only be found in seasonal ponds in three U.S. locations —Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland — along the mid-Atlantic coast. One of those wetlands is in the Delmarva Peninsula, a stretch of land between the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays.
The botanists who discovered the species in the 1980s believed it to be the Harper’s beaksedge and recorded it as such. That label remained until 2023, when another botanist who authored a paper about the mid-Atlantic beaksedge realized that the plant that had been identified decades earlier was mislabeled.
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