Milwaukee County Parks Natural Areas Program
Plant Database

Milwaukee County Parks Natural Areas Program staff took the 107 SEWRPC (SE WI Regional Planning Commission) plant lists for the Milwaukee County Park's natural areas and compiled them into one excel file (Natural Areas Plant List). These are plant species that have been documented from 1975 onward (1 or 2 exceptions). In addition to species, they added bloom times, invasive species designations, coefficient of conservatism (see Note) rankings, seeding times if they're known, and the Milwaukee County plant communities where you are most likely to find these plants. The consolidated list also highlights (in yellow) the native trees and shrubs and sorts the plants into plant community reference lists.

The bloom times, plant communities, and coefficients of conservatism rankings are taken from the Freckman Herbarium website (http://wisplants.uwsp.edu/index.html) managed by the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

There currently isn't much data available for Southeastern Wisconsin seeding times for most of these plants. One of the greatest challenges to our natural areas is sustaining genetic viability within isolated sites. If they know when plants are going to seed, Milwaukee County Parks staff or volunteers can collect the seed for use in natural areas where they've removed invasives, artificially moving local genetics throughout natural areas and saving a great deal of money (vs purchasing the seed). Parks staff will continue recording seeding dates and update the document annually.

Once the vegetation/habitat inventories are complete (end of 2011) Natural Areas personnel will be able to cross reference data with soil types and begin to match plant communities to the soils where they are predominantly located. So even if with a very degraded site, they'll have a guide for restoration if that is the desired goal.

They are also inventorying all invasive species at the same time and will be sorting that data to see if there are soils, topography, trails, roads, or other influences that are making certain sites within the County more vulnerable to invasive species introduction/establishment than others.

Hopefully, this database can assist others as a guide for Milwaukee County restoration projects.

A special thank you SEWRPC for logging countless hours/years in the field documenting the plants of the Milwaukee County Park system.

Note: Definition of Coefficient of Conservatism
A number on a scale from 0 to 10 that represents an estimated probability that a plant species is likely to occur in a landscape relatively unaltered from what is believed to be a pre-settlement condition. A C (coefficient) of 0 indicates the probability is almost 0, while a C of 10 indicates the plant is almost certain to be found only in an undegraded natural community. Introduced plants were not part of the pre-settlement flora, so no coefficient is assigned to them. Coefficients are also generally not assigned to varieties, hybrids, and subspecies.