Samford, West Alabama Professors Help Identify New Botanical Species

By Ed Enoch
The Tuscaloosa News

Alabama’s biodiversity is extremely rich.

“You don’t have to go to the Amazon rainforest for a trip to find new species,” said Lawrence J. Davenport, a Samford University professor. “I think of Alabama as a semi-tropical jungle. It is largely unexplored. Sure, we know what the edges hold, but the interior parts are still ripe and ready for us to get in there and find new stuff.”

Davenport and Brian Keener, a University of West Alabama professor, co-authored a paper on two new species of Stachys, commonly called hedge nettle, discovered in the east central part of Alabama. Their work was published in the “Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas,” an international botanical journal.The Alabama hedge nettle, Stachys alabamica, was found on a half-mile stretch of bank along Cheaha Creek in Clay County. Nelson’s Hedge-Nettle, Stachys nelsonii, is only known from a single population on Horn Mountain in Talladega County.

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