Throughout 2018, Discover Life in America will be celebrating its 20th year of discovery in Great Smoky Mountains National Park by sharing posts about a few of the park’s wondrous varieties of plants and animals. All are species that were discovered in the national park as part of the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI), started in 1998. To date, the research effort has tallied nearly 1,000 species new to science and added nearly 10,000 species to park checklists.
The velvet-leaf blueberry (Vaccinium myrtilloides) was the 5,000th new species record discovered in the park during the ATBI (found in 2006 by former DLIA employee Heather MacCulloch Hansen). It is a low-lying deciduous shrub with bright green leaves covered with velvety hairs. It was discovered at about 5,000 feet elevation, and like many species of plants and animals in the higher elevations of the park, its nearest populations are further to the north. This is because the higher elevation environments in the Southern Appalachians are similar to those much further north. During eras of past climatic change, it managed to survive here on the higher mountain peaks. This small shrub is rare in the Smokies, but in Canada especially, its sweet berries and foliage are an important source of food for many species of birds, mammals, insects, and humans.
