Rare Plant Species

The Guadalupe Mountains violet, a perennial, yellow-flowered violet, is an extremely rare endemic plant of the Guadalupe Mountains. The violet is known only from Guadalupe Mountains National Park, where it grows at high elevations on vertical limestone faces.

Capulin Volcano National Monument is located within a vegetative transitional zone between the Rocky Mountains and shortgrass prairie, resulting in a relatively high diversity of habitats for wildlife and plants not found elsewhere in the surrounding grasslands. Capulin goldenrod (Solidago capulinensis) is a rare plant found at the monument, and was first described and collected in 1936 by Cockerell and Andrews.

Jones cycladenia is a long-lived, perennial herb that grows four to six inches tall. At the time of its listing as a threatened species, Jones cycladenia occurred in four known areas in the Canyonlands region of southwestern Utah and northern Arizona.

Mancos milkvetch is a perennial that grows in tufted mats close to the ground. It occurs in scattered populations on remote rimrock ledges and mesa tops in the Four Corners area of Colorado and New Mexico.

Navajo sedge is a slender, perennial sedge known from a few small populations in northeastern Arizona and southeastern Utah. It occurs only in seeps and springs, and is usually found within pinyon-juniper woodlands.

Peebles Navajo cactus is a very small succulent that occurs in just two core populations near Holbrook and Joseph City, Arizona.

Zuni fleabane is a perennial herb known from about 20 scattered populations in the Zuni, Datil, and Sawtooth mountain ranges in west-central New Mexico and in the Chuska Mountains in northeastern Arizona.

Standing guard over the rim of the Grand Canyon, the tiny, federally endangered "sentry" milk-vetch is a perennial herb that forms a one inch tall by eight inch wide mat in shallow pockets of soil on the Kaibab limestone.

Brady’s pincushion cactus is an inconspicuous, rounded cactus. It grows in scattered populations over a 27 square mile area near Marble Canyon along the Colorado River in Arizona.

At the time of its listing as a federal threatened species, Mesa Verde cactus grew in a few isolated populations in southwestern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico.