Indian Paintbrush
Indiana Dunes National Park provides habitat for approximately 1,100 native vascular plants, including the federally threatened Pitcher’s thistle. The park is home to populations of 30% of Indiana’s listed rare, threatened, endangered, and special concern plant species. Shaped by glacial events and changing climates, the dunes landscape contains disjunct flora representative of eastern deciduous forests, boreal forest remnants, and species with Atlantic coast affinities. In addition, the national park is part of the upper- and eastern-most limits of the tallgrass prairie peninsula and supports high quality remnants of this ever-diminishing vegetation type. The presence of many unique dune and wetland plant community types has lead to a long history of botanical exploration and research. Lands within the national park have been called the birthplace of American ecology as a result of early work on plant succession performed by Dr. Henry Cowles over 100 years ago. Investigations related to several areas of plant ecology continue today and are viewed as essential to preserving the dynamic ecosystems of the Indiana Dunes.
The jack pine tree (Pinus banksiana) is a unique species at Indiana Dunes. Typical of evergreen forests of the north, this species finds its southernmost natural populations here along our shores. In 1925, Dr. Henry Chandler Cowles published "The Book of Plants" with Bertha Morris Parker. In the book, he includes a chapter on jack pines which sheds light onto why this species can be found so far south.
