Plant enthusiasts go to extremes trying to save beloved species
North America’s various beach plums bear purple-blue, cherry-sized fruits that make for a beloved New England jelly. The small trees’ tolerance for salty, wind-blasted shores impresses biologists. But even a beach plum has limits.
One of the plum’s distinctive forms, named in 1897 for physician Charles B. Graves who called attention to the plant, may have gone extinct in the wild in large part because people like a little privacy when they need a bathroom break on the beach.
All of the known Graves’ beach plums grew in a cluster on a ridge overlooking the Connecticut shore in Groton. It “was the only shade on the beach,” says botanist Wesley Knapp, who studies extinctions with the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program in Raleigh. Beachgoers seeking discreet foliage gravitated to Prunus maritima var. gravesii, relentlessly delivering excess nitrogen. “I can’t think of a worse way … to go extinct,” Knapp says.
