An annotated catalogue of the Bertram Whittier Wells Big Savannah (Pender Co., North Carolina) collections in the North Carolina State University Herbarium

Described as an upland grass-sedge bog, Big Savannah represented an exceedingly rare community type in North Carolina, being completely treeless but hosting a rich herbaceous flora. Unfortunately, the savanna remained unprotected and was lost by the 1950s. Despite the detailed floristic inventory and community descriptions published by B.W. Wells, voucher specimens were never cited. The objective of this study was to compile a vouchered checklist of the plants of the lost Big Savannah by cataloguing the extant Wells collections from the site. Such a checklist can be useful in addressing taxonomic problems arising from changes in nomenclature and providing a specimen-based foundation for restoration efforts of this community type. As Wells’ specimens are intercalated with other collections at NCSC, a herbarium “crawl” was undertaken to identify the pertinent collections. The resulting checklist includes 231 specimens comprising 136 species.