The University of North Carolina Herbarium has
catalogued approximately 70 specimens that were collected by Yolande McCurdy.
Most were collected for here Masters Thesis project, "An ecosytematic
analysis of the vegetation of Hanging Rock State Park, Danbury, North
Carolina," which she completed in 1975 under the direction of Dr. Al
Radford. As databasing of NCU's collection continues, no doubt additional specimens
that she deposited will be found and catalogued. She uses the name
"Yolande McCurdy" on the specimens deposited at NCU.
McCurdy earned a B. A. from Wilson College
(Chambersburg, PA) in 1972. She is now the Associate Curator of the Herbarium
of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee (UOS).
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McCurdy, Yolande deB. (1975) An
Ecosystematic Analysis of the Vegetation of Hanging Rock State Park, Danbury,
North Carolina. Master of Arts Thesis in the Curriculum in Ecology,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC.
An anlysis of the vegetation of Hanging Rock
State park was undertaken to describe and classify the plant communities
present and explain their distribution in terms of topographic and edaphic
factors. Phytosociological sampling methods were used to obtain species lists
and environmental measurements for 67 releves in the summers of 1973 and
1974. These were tabulated with the aid of a computer, and seven
community-types were named and correlated primarily with moisture regime as
related to the topographic-edaphic complex-gradient. The community-types and
other species groups among the nearly 300 species found in the park were arranged
according to the Natural Areas Classification System for the Piedmont of
Eastern North America. The rough topography of quartzite ridges and
poorly-developed soils provide a habitat for vegetation more closely related
to that of the mountians than of the piedmont.
