As spring approaches many native plant gardeners are looking for sources of native plants for their landscape. Many organizations have native plant sales in the spring.
KNPS is building a listing of these native plant sales and plant and seed swaps, that will appear on our page, Native Plant Sales in Kentucky and Surrounding Areas in 2021. But to build this list we need your help. If you or your organization are having a sale this spring (or in the fall, if you have the date set), please submit the information about the sale using the form below. If you know of a group planning a sale, please direct them towards this form. Thanks.
Native Plant Sales and Swaps
A form to collect information about native plant sales and swaps in the region
On Dec. 11, 2020, KNPS held our first virtual membership meeting and botanical symposium. For several years, KNPS has organized a botanical symposium in the fall with a goal of bringing together professionals, citizen scientists, academics, gardeners and students in order to learn about what’s going on in the world of Kentucky Botany. Despite the pandemic year, we thought it was important to continue this event.
We had over 120 people join us online for several hours of informative presentations and interesting discussions. We know that many people wanted to join us but were unable to for various reasons. Here are all of the presentations.
Keynote Address: The Flora of the Southeastern United States – its Evolution, Exploration, and Conservation
Dr. Alan Weakley Alan is the Director, UNC Herbarium (NCU), North Carolina Botanical Gardens, as well as Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Biology and Ecology, Environment, and Energy Program, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. More about Dr. Weakley
1 hour 8 minutes long
State of Kentucky Plant Conservation and KNPS Updates.
Jen Koslow, Tara Littlefield, Nick Koenig, & Jeff Nelson Jen is an Associate Professor in Biological Sciences at Eastern Kentucky University specializing in plant ecology. Tara is the Rare Plant Program Manager & Botanist in the Plant Conservation Section of the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves, as well as the KNPS President. Nick is a student at EKU and KNPS Ladyslipper Associate Editor. Jeff is a KNPS Board member and a life long amateur naturalist.
30 minutes long
Inventory, Monitoring and Management of Rare Plants and Communities in State Nature Preserves and Natural Areas
Devin Rodgers Devin is a Botanist with the Plant Conservation Section of the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves.
28 minutes long
Remnant Grasslands and Pollinator Habitat Along Kentucky’s Roadsides
Tony Romano Tony is a Botanist with the Plant Conservation Section of the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves.
26 minutes long
Native Plant Propagation Projects
Emily Ellingson & Heidi Braunreiter Emily is the Curator and Native Plants Collection Manager at The Arboretum: State Botanical Garden and a KNPS Board member. Heidi is a Botanist with the Plant Conservation Section of the Office of Kentucky State Nature Preserves and Vice President of KNPS.
29 minutes long
Exciting Kentucky Botanical Discoveries
Mason Brock & Tara Littlefield Mason is the Herbarium Collections Manager at Austin Peay State University, Clarksville Tennessee. Tara is the Rare Plant Program Manager & Botanist in the Plant Conservation Section of the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves and President of KNPS.
The Lady Slipper newsletter of the Kentucky Native Plant Society has been published since the Society’s founding in 1986. This is one of a series of reprints from past issues. This article, about sweet fern (Comptonia peregrina), first appeared in Vol. 26, No 1, Spring 2011. If you would like to see other past issues, visit the Lady Slipper Archives, where all issues from Vol. 1, No. 1, February 1986 to Vol. 35, 2020.
Sweet fern—A rare Kentucky shrub with an interesting history
By Tara Littlefield, Botanist, Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission
Comptonia peregrine, KSNPC file photo
The wax myrtle or bayberry family (Myricaceae) is known for its odor. These plants have resinous dots on their leaves, making their leaves aromatic. Plants in this family have a wide distribution, including Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America, missing only from Australasia. Myricaceae members are mostly shrubs to small trees and often grow in xeric or swampy acidic soils. More familiar members of the wax myrtle family include many in the Genus Myrica (sweet gale, wax myrtle), some of which are used as ornamentals and are economically important. In addition, the wax coating on the fruit of several species of Myrica, has been used traditionally to make candles.
So what does this interesting family have in common with Kentucky’s flora? We are lucky to have just one species in the wax myrtle family, Sweet fern (Comptonia peregrina). In addition, it is also a monotypic genus restricted to eastern North America. This means that the genus Comptonia has only one species (C. peregrina) worldwide, and just happens to be found here in KY! Of course the common name sweet fern is misleading. This woody shrub is certainly not a fern. However, the leaves have a similar shape to pinnules of a fern frond (leaf). But having sweet in the common name is no mistake. If you crush the leaves throughout the growing season, a lovely smell is emitted as the essential oils volatilize into the air.
Female flowers (short round catkins with reddish bracts) and male flowers (elongated catkins clustered at the branch tips) – www.nativehaunts.comphenology.html
Sweet fern is a clonal shrub that grows up to one meter high and spreads through rhizomes. The leaves are alternate and simple, linear and coarsely irregularly toothed, dark green above and a bit paler below. It is monoecious (meaning male and female flowers on different plants). The female flowers are not showy— short rounded catkins [dense cluster of apetalous flowers, usually associated with oaks, birches and willows] with reddish bracts. The male flowers are elongated yellow-green catkins clustered at the branch tips, the pollen being adapted to wind dispersal. The fruit is a round, bur-like cluster of ovoid nutlets that turn brown when mature in late summer. The bark is reddish and highly lenticeled (small corky pores or narrow lines on the bark that allow for gas exchange).
While very common in the northern part of its range (northeastern United States and Canada), sweet fern is state listed endangered in Kentucky, along with being state listed as rare inOhio, Tennessee, South Carolina, West Virginia, Georgia, and North Carolina. The populations of sweet fern in the southern part of its range are isolated and disjunct from the common habitats up north. There seems to be a close association of these remnant populations with the Appalachian Mountains, which suggests that the populations in the southern ranges remained in protected “refugia” during periods of great plant migrations, such as during glaciations.
Sweet fern is typically found in openings in coniferous forests with well drained dry, acidic sandy or gravely soils with periodic disturbances. In the north, it can be found in pine-oak barrens or jack pine and spruce forests that are maintained by fire, creating openings and decreasing competition. It has also been noted to colonize road banks and even highly disturbed soils such as mined areas. Contrary to these open coniferous habitats with periodic fire, the remnant populations of sweet fern in Kentucky and Tennessee are found on sandstone cobble bars, which are maintained by annual floods. Despite being found on habitats that are maintained by different disturbance regimes, these two communities share a few things in common—they are both dry, acidic, sandy and nutrient poor. Disturbances are a natural occurring impact in these communities that removes shrubs and saplings, thus decreasing competition so that sweet fern can thrive.
Sweet fern has adapted to these specialized habitats. It is a fires adapted species; it will resprout after a fire and increase its clonal sprouts through underground rhizomes. It is also a xerophyte, a plant adapted to dry conditions. And since it is adapted to living in nutrient poor, acidic soils, it has evolved with the bacteria Frankia that fixes nitrogen, somewhat like the more famous nitrogen fixing legumes who have partnered with the bacteria Rhizobium. Did you know that there are over 160 species of nonleguminous plants that fix nitrogen? It is also the host of the sweet fern blister rust (Cronartium comptoniae) which reduces the growth of pines, particularly Jack pine. What interesting relationships this shrub has with bacteria and fungi! In addition, sweet fern is the food plant to larvae of many species of Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies). These include the Io moth (Automeris io), and several Coleophora case-bearers (some of which are found exclusively on sweet fern).
But perhaps the most fascinating facts about the rare shrub sweet fern is what it can tell us about the evolution of plants, the history of the earth, and the paleovegetational past of Kentucky. Geologically speaking, sweet fern is an old plant. In Kentucky, it was most likely more common some 20,000 years ago during the last glaciation, as Kentucky used to look like Canada. Analysis of pollen in sediment cores taken from natural ponds in Kentucky confirms this, spruce and jack pine was common in the uplands in the bluegrass. Sometimes it is difficult to think of plants migrating north and south in order to adapt to a changing climate. But what is even more mind blowing is that the genus Comptonia is perhaps millions of years old. Numerous fossils of dozens of extinct species of Comptonia have been found all across the Northern hemisphere, and the earliest of the fossils have been dated back to the Cretaceous period (the age of the Dinosaurs) over 65 million years ago. The first flowering plants (angiosperms) evolved only 135 million years ago, so Comptonia is one of the oldest living plants in the world—a true living fossil!
So when April comes around, and all of the spring wildflowers are emerging, think of sweet fern tucked deep into the gorges of Big South Fork and Rockcastle, its catkins releasing pollen in the wind, using the nitrogen fixed from its bacterial friends, withstanding the massive floods of two of Kentucky’s last wild rivers. And if you use your imagination, you may be able to see dinosaurs and tree ferns in the distance.
Berry, Edward W. 1906. Living and Fossil Species of Comptonia. The American Naturalist. Vol. 40, No. 475, pp. 485-524.
Darlington, Emlen. 1948. Notes on some North American Lepidoptera reared on Sweet Fern (Compontia asplenifolia Linnaeus) with Description of new species. Transactions of the American Entomological Society (1890-). Vol. 74, No. 3, pp. 173-185.
Liag, X., Wilde, V., Ferguon, D., Kvacek, Z, Ablaev, A., Wang, Y., and Li, C. 2010. Comptonia naumannii (Myricaceae) from the early Miocene of Weichang, China, and the paleobiogeographical implication of the genus. Review of Paleobotany and Palynology. Vol. 163, p. 52-63.
Medley, Max and Eugene Wofford. 1980. Thuja occidentalis L. and other noteworthy collections from the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River in McCreary County, Kentucky. Castanea. Vol. 45, No. 3, pp. 213-215.
As the first day of Winter has passed, the growing season has concluded in the Commonwealth. This may appear to be time for native plant enthusiast to close up shop until the beloved Spring ephemerals make their appearance in March. However, the Kentucky landscape provides plant lovers with many opportunities to botanize during these colder months, and I hope to share some of the groups you can learn as well as the resources I would recommend! While winter identification will be a bit more esoteric than having leaves and flowers at one’s disposal, it is a challenge I encourage everyone to take a jab at.
If there’s wood… there’s a bud!
From the largest of tress to the smallest of vines, if a plant has wood, then this necessitates a bud to protect next year’s leaves. While buds are smaller and look more similar to one another than flowers and leaves, they can give great clues to what species you might be looking at. Sometimes the buds can be more trustworthy than leaves as well!
Pictured on the left is Red Maple (Acer rubrum) and on the right is Kentucky’s state tree the Tulip Poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) both displaying their buds awaiting a botanist’s identification!
Evergreen
An obvious choice is to look for species that keep their leaves all year. This can range from ferns (see below) and gymnosperms (Pines and Spruces) to the angiosperms (like American Holly). While there will not be as many species to identify during the winter that have their leaves on display when compared to the summer months, there are still some species to appreciate.
Pictured is the Christmas Fern (Polystichum acrostichoides) which can be found year-round.
Mosses
I usually find the mosses to be the most challenging group of plant life to tackle, but, alas, the mosses do provide plant lovers to pursue their quest to learn what mother nature holds in store for us.
Resources
Below is one app and two books that can help with you winter botanical adventures:
This is a great resource for getting an identifier in the ballpark. The app may not do too well with pictures of buds especially if the pictures are not of the best quality, but it is worth a try. If you need instructions on how to use the app, check out the following Lady Slipper article from a previous issue: iNaturalist Tutorial
A great resource for moss identification for our area. Mosses are difficult to identify so this book may only help you get to family or genus, but some you might be able to get to species!
Hello KNPS members! I am writing to encourage you to become a part of the editorial. We are all volunteers and could use your help in many ways. From checking for grammar to writing submissions, you can be involved in the smallest to the largest of ways. Even if you can only help for 15 minutes a month, your involvement in the Lady Slipper would be extremely beneficial! If you would like to join, have any questions, or have an article idea, please email ladyslipper@knps.org. Thank you!
The Lady Slipper newsletter of the Kentucky Native Plant Society has been published since the Society’s founding in 1986. This is one of a series of reprints from past issues. This article, about Kentucky’s oldest documented trees, first appeared in Vol. 24, No. 2, Winter 2009. If you would like to see other past issues, visit the Lady Slipper Archives, where all issues from Vol. 1, No. 1, February 1986 to Vol. 34, No. 1, Winter/Spring 2019 (after which we moved to this blog format) can be found.
Floracliff’s Old Trees: Acorns of Restoration for the Inner Bluegrass Region
By Neil Pederson, Eastern Kentucky University
“Woodie C. Guthtree”, Kentucky’s oldest known living tree at 398 years. Photo by Beverly James.
Old trees are windows into historical events. The science of tree-ring analysis takes advantage of a characteristic common to all trees: no matter how bad things get – an approaching fire, tornado, drought, etc. – trees must stay in place and absorb these abuses. Though each tree is an individual, environmental events like these impact all trees in a similar fashion: events that limit a tree’s ability to gain energy reduce the annual ring width. Scientists interpret patterns of ring widths within tree populations to reconstruct environmental history. To date, tree-ring scientists have successfully reconstructed drought history, Northern Hemisphere temperature, fire histories, insect outbreaks, etc. Tree-ring studies have also enriched human history. Scientists have dated logs from ancient structures that, in turn, triggered revisions of human history. Similarly, tree-ring evidence indicates that a severe drought likely contributed to the failure of The Lost Colony in Roanoke, NC and to the outbreak of a highly-contagious disease and subsequent crashes of the human population in ancient Mexico City. Just a few old trees in a small landscape can shed light into long-forgotten or unobserved events.
Floracliff Manager Beverly James cores “Old Twisty”.
In late-summer ‘08, Beverly James, manager of Floracliff Nature Sanctuary, contacted me about sampling some trees in Floracliff to gain insight into the preserve’s ecological history. Having been in Floracliff previously, I was skeptical of coring its trees. It is so close to a major corridor (even pre-Daniel Boone), has a series of fields within the sanctuary, is dominated by a second-growth forest being overrun by bush honeysuckle and lies in the vicinity of the oldest European settlements in Kentucky. How and why could old trees survive these conditions? I feared that the coring of any trees here would reveal little beyond the fact that Floracliff was a young forest heavily cut within the last 100 years.
Later that fall, with permission from the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission and a great crew, including Dr. Ryan McEwan of University of Dayton, Ciara Lockstadt (a volunteer assistant at Floracliff), and Chris Boyer (undergrad at Eastern Kentucky University), the six of us cored 20 living chinkapin oaks. The first tree we cored came in at 372 years, the oldest documented tree in Kentucky—a record, it turns out, that did not last more than 30 minutes. Our second tree came in at 398 years and is now the oldest-documented tree in Kentucky. Named “Woodie C. Guthtree”, he now has his own “Facebook” page [Visit Woodie C. Guthree’s FB page].
Floracliff’s old growth “epicenter” by Beverly James.
I teach a course on the ecology of old-growth forests. A reoccurring theme of the course is, “What is an old-growth forest?” As our society moves farther and farther away from the 1600s and fully appreciates the value of biological conservation, this question becomes pertinent. If the definition of an old-growth forest is simply a forest untouched by people of European descent, then there are no old-growth forests and little incentive to protect once, twice or thrice disturbed forests. However, if we define old-growth forests using the philosophy of Michael Pollan, who states that old-growth forests (or anything natural) will only persist because of human will, then it makes sense to allow the influence of humans into the old-growth forest definition. Making this allowance then allows for future creation and restoration of old-growth forests, a concept that the former definition makes impossible.
To be clear, these old trees are cull trees in a second-growth forest – these trees were left behind by loggers because they were seen as “inferior”. They did not grow to be prime, sawboard-producing trees. Their value, in my mind, is great. Not only have they been witnessing changes in the environment since well before Daniel Boone stepped foot into Kentucky, they are an important link to the past in an area that has more legend right now than facts. Floracliff and its Original Individuals can be a core for the recovery of the Inner Bluegrass landscape. See, while these trees were not considered “superior” when the Floracliff was cut, they contain genetic structure that is directly tied to pre-European forests. There was likely a loss of genetic diversity with logging. Yet, the architecture of the Original Individuals, which is what allowed them to live through the pre-sanctuary era, was likely shaped by what they struggled against to survive – direct competition, rather than weak genes. Plants seem to carry multiple copies of their genes. And, if the new discipline/area of study epigentics is any indication, genes are dynamic; a tree’s DNA system might be more dynamic than previously thought. Hope might genetically spring anew from these old chinkapin oaks.
Neil Pederson with “Woodie.”
As this chapter of environmental investigation closes, I look forward to the future of Floracliff and discoveries of the environmental history of the Inner Bluegrass Region. Floracliff is an emerald of the Inner Bluegrass; it can seed restoration of future old-growth forests while providing hope for the discovery of more forests with similar connections to ancient times. Floracliff will also be the lead forest in the reconstruction of regional environmental and human history. Its trees can help us answer questions such as, “What was the climate like during the settlement of Fort Boonesborough, Harrodsburg and Danville?” and “Were there any large-scale disturbances in the forests of the Inner Bluegrass region during the last 300 years?” The rare old trees of Floracliff will reveal important slivers of historical Fayette County ecology – slivers which will allow us to ponder and construct plans for a more sensible and hopeful future environment.
