Theodore C. Baim's flora of Schenectady County, New York: A baseline for a future county flora1

Theodore C. Baim was an amateur botanist who spent most of his adult life documenting and collecting the flora of Schenectady County, New York, between 1937 and 1990. We have transcribed his handwritten flora to serve as a baseline for future floristic work in the county. We also examined and transcribed the label data from thousands of specimens he collected throughout the county and documented in his flora and confirmed their presence in herbaria. Even though it is the second smallest county in the state outside of New York City (after Rockland County), Schenectady County has a very diverse landscape from pine barrens in the east to a black spruce-tamarack bog in the west. It also has a long history of disturbance by farming and urbanization, as well as important transportation corridors, which have resulted in a flora with 29% exotic species. The vouchered vascular flora consists of 1,222 taxa within 466 genera and 133 families. The five largest families are the Asteraceae, Cyperaceae, Poaceae, Rosaceae, and Fabaceae. The largest genera are Carex, Viola, Solidago, Salix, and Symphyotrichum. Twenty species are listed as endangered, threatened, or rare, but some have not been seen in decades. We encourage others to check on Baim's unvouchered observations and literature citations to add to the flora so it can be updated to understand trends and changes.