Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) Abundance at Varying Elevations throughout Pennsylvania

• Caroline Benfer

  Juniata College

  Author

• Izzy Croteau

  Juniata College

  Author

• Korin Koehler

  Juniata College

  Author

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis), a member of the Papaveraceae family, spreads quickly as ground cover due to their easily dispersed seeds. Bloodroot can be found in the Eastern half of North America, in both high and low elevations of upland woods and floodplain woods. Knowing that Bloodroot can be found in a range of elevation, we wanted to see which elevation Bloodroot was more prevalent in. We hypothesized that Bloodroot will have the same preference of elevation, whether that be high or low, throughout the tested sites in Pennsylvania. To test this, we examined 9 randomly selected plots for Bloodroot. We looked at 3 plots of high elevations and 3 plots of low elevations. Due to a low number of Bloodroot citings, we can neither reject nor accept our hypothesis. For a more conclusive measure additional plots and locations should be sampled.

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