By Ian Adams, BC KBA Coordinator. This is a contributed blog post. If you have a story about a KBA site, species or ecosystem that you would like to submit as a blog post, please reach out to Peter Soroye (psoroye @wcs.org).

(French translation coming soon/Traduction française à venir)

Spalding’s Campion is one of the most rare plants in Canada. Yaq̓it ʔa·knuqⱡi’it – Tobacco Plains Key Biodiversity Area in southeastern BC is the only place in Canada where it is found. Read more about this plant, the KBA and work to conserve its seeds here.

Forest ecologist Randy Harris kneels down in the shade of the ponderosa pine beside a withering brown plant and carefully looks at the faded blooms still attached to the dried stalk. His quarry are seeds from  one of the rarest plants in Canada, to be collected as part of a new conservation effort to bank the seeds of rare and culturally important plants in British Columbia.

The plant is Spalding’s Campion, or Silene spaldingii, endemic to the Palouse Prairie found in the semi-arid inland northwest convergence of eastern Washington, Oregon and central Idaho. An isolated population is also found here in the Tobacco Plains, an area of grassland and open forest in the Rocky Mountain Trench  of northwestern Montana that also extends just north of the border into British Columbia, Canada, where Randy is carefully separating seeds from the plant. Whether it was culturally important to Ktunaxa, the indigenous people in this area, or others is unknown but it certainly is rare.

This is the only place in Canada where Spalding’s Campion occurs and the vast majority of its very limited Canadian population occurs on Yaq̓it ʔa·knuqⱡi’it First Nation’s Reserve, 4290 ha of land that runs north from the Canada-USA border. Today, Randy is on provincial lands, just off the Reserve. The entirety of the plant’s range in Canada is also a Key Biodiversity Area that acknowledges the importance of the site to national and global biodiversity.

The seed collection is part of an initiative by Carrina Maslovat, Plant Conservation Specialist with BC Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship, the Coastal Douglas-fir Conservation Partnership, Ktunaxa-owned and operated Nupqu Native Plants,  University of British Columbia’s Botanical Garden and numerous other partners to establish a seedbank for species at risk and of cultural value in BC. These Spalding’s Campion seeds are  the first deposited into that bank.

Listed under the Canadian federal Species at Risk Act as Endangered, Spalding’s Campion is an unassuming perennial that is adapted to frequent low-intensity fires that reduce forest floor litter. In the USA, where the bulk of Spalding’s Campion occurs, the species has been listed as Threatened since 2001.The plant grows 20-50 cm tall and produces up to half-a-dozen white blooms in July. The stalk and leaves are sticky, as are most Silene species, which contributes to its other common name, Spalding’s Catchfly. Unlike other “sticky” plants, however, it is not carnivorous. Rather, the stickiness is thought to be a deterrent to ants and other insects from eating the plant.

Historically, the open forest conditions favoured by the plant were maintained by Indigenous burning practices. Fire history work at Tobacco Plains has shown that Ktunaxa, including Yaq̓it ʔa·knuqⱡi’it, regularly lit fires to reduce forest understory and foster grasses and other plants. Every seven to fifteen years fires moved through here, invigorating growth of fescues, bunchgrasses and wildflowers like the campion. Colonial suppression of Indigenous fires and exclusion of the natural fire regime has greatly altered the ecology of this ecosystem and led to declines of several species, including Spalding’s Campion. Without frequent, low-intensity fire, fuel loads can build up and the inevitable hotter fire can kill the plant and destroy the organic soil it requires.

To combat this, Yaq̓it ʔa·knuqⱡi’it has a very active ecosystem restoration program to reduce forest cover, restore wetlands and reintroduce low intensity fire where feasible. More widely, the Rocky Mountain Trench Ecosystem Restoration Program seeks similar benefits. But it’s slow and expensive work, often with mixed results. Nonetheless, monitoring activities in 2024 on the Reserve found a bumper year with hundreds of campion plants.

Unfortunately, efforts to reintroduce fire to this landscape today are challenged by invasive plants that more often than not take over these sites and outcompete native plants like the campion. While it can tolerate light grazing, too much reduces the plants viability and can lead to loss of local populations where cattle are numerous.

These threats and the very limited distribution emphasize the importance of the seed collection work Randy Harris is doing for Carrina Maslovat. That the Tobacco Plains Spalding’s Campion population in Montana and BC is isolated from the main Palouse Prairie core suggests that perhaps plants here have some unique genetic aspects. At the very least, the plant’s rarity means having seed as a backup is of critical importance, should disaster strike and the population becomes extirpated.

The seed that Randy is seeking is tiny. It’s meticulous work, thankfully in the shade of the ponderosa pine. He shakes them into a container where they can be cleaned of the dried seed capsule before transferring them to small envelopes, carefully labeled, then sent to the National Tree Seed Centre in New Brunswick. The Tree Seed Centre has agreed to store BC seed until a provincial facility can be built. Randy’s work has been supported by regional biologist Lindsay Anderson and the Province’s Land Based Investment Strategy which supports Recovery Actions for Species at Risk, and is part of a Regional Implementation Plan for Rare and Endangered Plants.

The Yaq̓it ʔa·knuqⱡi’it – Tobacco Plains Key Biodiversity Area reflects the ecological importance of the area as a contributor to global biodiversity. Spalding’s Campion meets global KBA criteria and thresholds and, being at the northern range limit for the species, holds a critical place as climate change impacts take hold. The seed collected here could one day play a vital conservation role.