Does it sound like a made up word to you?  It does to me too.  But I came across it as part of my sketching time on Monday.  Apparently real scientists use it to mean something along the lines of “a species which was once found in a particular area, like Pennsylvania, but is no longer found there, but it isn’t extinct or endangered actually.”  So, for instance, Pennsylvania has an enormous number (two handwritten college-ruled pieces of paper’s worth) of extirpated plant species – species that were once native but aren’t found anywhere in the whole state any more.

So that was my sketching time on Monday.  And it was definitely worthwhile – it led me to such evocative names as “three-seeded mercury.”