Kreischer Hill Rare Plant Community
By Helen Forgione, Botanist

The city-owned 130-acre parcel of undeveloped land in Staten Island historically known as Kreischer Hill is proposed for development as the “Charleston Retail Center.” (Metro Forest Council News (Vol. 7 No. 1)). As implied by the name, most of Kreischer Hill is upland, with a small, narrow New York State DEC-mapped wetland in the northeastern portion. The wetland includes a feeder stream of Mill Creek that drains part of Clay Pit Pond Park.

The natural area from Bloomingdale Road south to Richmond Valley including Clay Pit Ponds and Kreischer Hill is unique in New York State with its combination of diverse surficial geology and topography in the southern-most part of the state. This has resulted in diverse habitats with a high number of rare species and ecological communities that survive in a highly developed landscape. It has a fascinating history of land use that was essential to the development of this part of Staten Island. It has endured many impacts, especially the construction of super highways, but it has recovered to the point of preserving the organisms and natural history of this important ecosystem.

According to Steve Young, Program Botanist of the New York Natural Heritage Program, the Clay Pit Ponds/Kreischer Hill area has the highest number (14) of rare species and ecological communities of any site between the Hudson Highlands and Suffolk County. It has the highest number of rare elements in Richmond County and New York City. For reference, in the New York City area, Jamaica Bay is second with 13, Gateway/Rockaway is third with 12, and Pelham Bay is fourth with 10 elements.

This area has the highest quality example of only eight red maple-sweetgum swamps in the state. In addition, New York Natural Heritage ecologists classified a new natural community type, post oak-blackjack oak barrens, during recent surveys at Clay Pit Ponds. More recently, it was also found at Kreischer Hill. This community is known in New York only on Staten Island. This is the first recognition of this natural community type anywhere in North America, and its description is being incorporated into the National Vegetation Classification System, the federal standard for vegetation classification, and is the only post oak-blackjack oak barrens in New York.
Kreischer Hill’s forest communities include a blight-resistant, reproducing population of American chestnut trees. It is astonishing that these trees have survived at the very epicenter of the blight’s introduction. Yet, not only are they surviving, they are producing viable seeds and saplings. American chestnut has no formal protected status because stump sprouts are relatively common. But a reproducing population such as the one at Kreischer Hill must be considered an “endangered phenomenon,” because of its extreme rarity and valuable genetic material, especially in a northern location. Such trees and their offspring are vitally important to the ongoing efforts to breed blight-resistant trees and restore this keystone species to its rightful place throughout eastern forests.

But it is the occurrence of the globally-endangered plant, Torrey’s Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum torrei); on the site that makes the preservation of Kreischer Hill such a priority. Not only is this New York City’s rarest plant, it is endangered with extinction throughout its range, with only about 20 colonies known today in the entire world. Compared with many of the plants on the Federal endangered species list, Torrey’s Mountain Mint is much rarer.

There are an additional eight rare plants that once grew here and have not been seen since the late 1800s and early 1900s. Many of them may still be found with more intensive plant searches, especially in the undeveloped area south of the state park. There are two rare plants here that can be seen nowhere else in New York (short-leaf pine, Pinus echinata and hawthorne, Crataegus uniflora). The rare hawthorne was found after a 90-year absence from the flora of the state.

Clay Pit Ponds/Kreischer Hill Existing Rare Plants:
Crataegus iniflora
Eupatorium hyssopifolium var. laciniatum
Hypericum hypericoides ssp. multicaule
Juncus scirpoides
Lespedeza stuevei
Quercus phellos
Pinus echinata
Pinus virginiana
Pycnanthemum torrei
Sabatia angularis
Viburnum nudum var. nudum
Eleocharis ovata
Strophostyles umbellate

Clay Pit Ponds/Kreischer Hill Historical Rare Plants:
Euonymus americana
Euphorbia ipecacuanhae
Helonias bullata
Lechea pulchella var. moniliformis
Sabatia dodecandra var. dodecandra
Smilax pseudochina
Symphyotrichum (Aster) concolor
Viola primulifolia

Kreischer Hill is on the list of sites to be preserved by the Harbor Estuary Program, The New York State Open Space Advisory Committee and the Harbor Herons Region, New York Audubon, and the Trust for Public Land. Kreischer Hill is also included as part of a “Willow Oak/Hybrid Oak Biological Reserve” proposed by Richard Lynch, a botanist specializing in rare plants of Staten Island, since its sandy soils are also within the historic range of a number of rare hybrid oaks.

Kreischer Hill is owned by New York City’s Economic Development Corporation and is bounded by Veterans’ Road West on the south and east, Englewood Avenue on the north and Arthur Kill Road and privately held land to the west. The eastern portion of the parcel is bounded by Clay Pit State Park Preserve to the north, with which it shares a common border. Kreischer Hill is, in fact, an ecological extension of Clay Pit State Park Preserve.It would be tragic to allow poorly planned development to fragment this intact biologically diverse landscape.