Dwarf hackberry (Celtis tenuifolia) COSEWIC assessment and status report: chapter 4

Distribution

Global range

Dwarf hackberry is a North American species with a distribution primarily from the lower Mississippi Valley to the Atlantic piedmont and coastal plain. Its distribution is from eastern Texas and Oklahoma to southern Missouri across to Virginia and south to the gulf coast. There are outlying populations in western Illinois, northern Indiana and Ohio, and southern Michigan and Ontario (Figure 1). Keddy (1984) provides a general global distribution and Dunster (1992) shows detail of disjunct populations and limits of glaciation, duplicated below:

Figure 1.  Global distribution of Celtis tenuifolia (Dunster, 1992).

Figure 1. Global distribution of Celtis tenuifolia

Canadian range

In Canada, the species is known in only six non-contiguous locations, all in Ontario, and many of these have been recognized only recently. The first collection was in the Port Franks area in 1907. At Point Pelee it was not collected until 1963 (Point Pelee National Park, 1991), and then later described as widespread but uncommon (Maycock et al., 1978). Core (1948) did not list this species for the Erie Islands. It was first collected on Pelee Island in 1958; Campbell & Reznicek (1977) also reported it as a recent record for Pelee Island. The Point Anne population was not documented until 1982, and the other two sites in the Belleville area were not documented until 1991 and 1993 (Figure 2). The species’ range covers an extent of occurrence of about <5,000 km² (excluding the region between the disjunct localities in southwestern Ontario and eastern Ontario); the species occupies about 18.5 km² of habitat.

Figure 2. Distribution of Celtis tenuifolia in Canada (only in southern Ontario).

Figure 2 .Distribution of Celtis tenuifolia in Canada

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