2026 PPA National Symposium

Michigan is central in the Great Lakes region and stretches over broad climate and vegetation zones from Eastern Deciduous Forest to Boreal Forest. But this only tells a small part of the story of Michigan’s botanical richness. For example, although Michigan is largely forested, most native upland plants in the flora are not plants of forest understories. Many of the habitats that make Michigan and the Great Lakes region special are open, sunny habitats including dunes, Great Lakes shorelines, rock & sand Barrens, prairies, and prairie openings in open woodland. In these small areas of open habitats occur a substantial proportion of our flora, and many of our rarest plant. Most especially, Great Lakes region endemics (plants found nowhere else except the Great Lakes region), are almost entirely in these open habitats, their evolution presenting interesting problems. Another group of species again almost entirely confined to the northern Great Lakes shores, especially Lake Superior, are plants occurring as rare outliers from their continuous distribution in subarctic and arctic habitats far to the north. These are species that became stranded in special microsites, surviving in these special sites as the flora and vegetation changed around them. Conversely, in the southwest of Michigan occurred a plant community, once extensive, now almost extinct in Michigan – eastern outliers of tall grass prairie, which community especially is a source of many favorite cultivated plants.