Swamp pink, in the lily family, has stunning good looks and a spot on both the federal threatened species list and the state endangered species list. What it does not have is the ability to use those attributes to advocate for itself. And therein lies the problem for the plant and others like it in need of protection in New Jersey: Though upwards of 350 species are considered endangered here, the designation is a little like paying to name a star.
A piece of paper may make it official, but in most areas nothing special happens as a result. Swamp pink is found along the Eastern U.S.
from New Jersey to Georgia. It seems to like this state we’re in better than anywhere else. About half of all swamp pink populations in the world can be found in the swamps, bogs, and wet meadows of the Garden State, mostly in South Jersey counties like Cumberland, Cape May, Ocean, Salem, and Burlington.
But their three-foot-tall, asparagus-like stalks and bubblegum pink flowers also poke up as far north as Morris County. The species started declining 50 years ago here and elsewhere. Herds of overabundant, ravenous deer plus pollution and development, particularly the egregious siltation of streams that happens when the earth is disturbed for building, changed things for swamp pink.
In the 1970s, the species was thriving; by 1988, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed it as endangered (it is now considered threatened).
New Jersey is home to dozens of plant species that are arguably even more .