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SCIENTIFIC NAME: Conradina verticillata
STATUS: Threatened
HABITAT: Sunny or slightly shaded sandy banks along rivers and streams
LIFE HISTORY: Fragrant; sometimes mistaken for common rosemary. Half-inch flowers form from mid-May to early June; purple/lavender, occasionally white.
THREATS: Habitat loss and degradation due to hydro-management; water pollution
RANGE: Tennessee and Kentucky on the Cumberland Plateau
CURRENT POPULATION: 48 colonies
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This modest flowering shrub roots itself on sandy banks along short stretches of three river systems in north-central Tennessee and Kentucky. Cumberland rosemary helps prevent these banks from eroding, but throughout its range this plant is being strangled by dam construction and water pollution.
It grows wild in only 44 spots in Tennessee and 4 in Kentucky, including in the Cumberland Plateau, an NRDC BioGem. Some people raise a cultivated strain in their back yards, using the aromatic leaves for cooking.
Recreational visitors to the Big South Fork National River also unintentionally trample this rare plant, which is listed as a threatened species.
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