The Vascular Flora of Sheffield Wildlife Management Area, Paulding County, Georgia

Aliya Donnell Davenport^1,2,* and Heather Sutton³

¹Reinhardt University, Waleska, GA 30183.²Current address - Biology Department, Wingate University, Wingate, NC 28174.³Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA 30144. *Corresponding author.

Southeastern Naturalist, Volume 25, Issue 1 (2026): 73–108

First published early online: 19 February 2026

Abstract
Sheffield Wildlife Management Area (WMA) is a 1963-ha property in Paulding County, GA. Portions of the WMA are managed by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources to facilitate restoration of the globally imperiled Montane Mixed Longleaf Pine Woodland community, which was historically much more abundant in portions of northwestern Georgia and northern Alabama. To provide baseline species-occurrence data for these efforts, and to characterize the various plant community types present, we conducted a floristic inventory of Sheffield WMA from May 2018 to June 2023. We collected a total of 437 species from 280 genera and 110 families, of which 58 (13.3%) are non-native, 23 (5.3%) are invasive, and 5 (1.1%) native species are recognized by the state of Georgia as imperiled or vulnerable. We vouchered 345 of these species that had not previously been vouchered from Paulding County. In addition to the Montane Mixed Longleaf Pine Woodland, we describe other 6 community types. Here we provide the first comprehensively vouchered plant inventory for Sheffield WMA.

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