By Ron Jones, Foundation Professor Emeritus, Eastern Kentucky University with assistance from Tara Littlefield
This botanical timeline is a continuation of the series that appeared in The Lady-Slipper in five installments from 2005 to 2008:
- 20(2) – Prehistoric times up to 12,000 years ago
- 21(2) – 12,000 years ago to 1900; 22(3)—1900 to 1980
- 22(3) – 1980 to 1998
- 23(1) – 1998 to mid-2008
- 2008 to 2014
The goal is to highlight major events in the history of Kentucky botany, including new discoveries, important publications, changes in agricultural developments, major changes or upgrades of herbaria, developments or changes for the Kentucky Native Plant Society, and the retirements or deaths of people that made major contributions to Kentucky botany. Much more has happened and will continue to happen; follow-up lists and updates are encouraged.
2015—Flora of the Southern and Mid-Atlantic States Working Draft of 21 May 2015
Alan S. Weakley University of North Carolina Herbarium (NCU) North Carolina Botanical Garden University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Area covered is indicated in map below. See update below for 2022.
2015—Guide to the Vascular Plants of Tennessee, by the Tennessee Flora Committee (editors: E.W. Chester, B.E. Wofford, J. Shaw, D. Estes, and D.H. Webb)
University of Tennessee Press. 813 pages. (from UT Press): The product of twenty-five years of planning, research, and writing, Guide to the Vascular Plants of Tennessee is the most comprehensive, detailed, and up-to-date resource of its kind for the flora of the Volunteer State, home to nearly 2,900 documented taxa. A team of editors, authors, and contributors not only provide keys for identifying the major groups, families, genera, species, and lesser taxa known to be native or naturalized within the state—with supporting information about distribution, frequency of occurrence, conservation status, and more—but they also offer a plethora of descriptive information about the state’s physical environment and vegetation, along with a summary of its rich botanical history, dating back to the earliest Native American inhabitants. Other features of the book include a comprehensive glossary of botanical terms and an array of line drawings that illustrate the identifying characteristics of vascular plants, from leaf shape and surface features to floral morphology and fruit types. Finally, the book’s extensive keys are indexed by families, scientific names, and common names.
The result is a user-friendly work that researchers, students, environmentalists, foresters, conservationists, and anyone interested in Tennessee botany and the surrounding states will value for years to come.
2015—Herbarium at Centre College in Danville transferred to EKU
A collection of a few hundred vascular plant specimens remaining at the Centre College Herbarium was transferred to EKY. Heidi Braunreiter facilitated this transfer, as she was working on her MS thesis on the flora of Boyle County at the time. The collection had formerly been curated by Susan Studlar and focused on nonvascular plants. When Susan Studlar accepted a position at West Virginia University, she took her collection of over 2,000 (mostly) Kentucky mosses and hepatics with her, leaving only a small collection of vascular plants at the college.
2015—White-haired goldenrod (Solidago albopilosa), one of Kentucky’s three endemic plants, is delisted by USFWS in September 2015. The discovery of new populations and stable long-term trends documented by KSNPC botanists Deb White, Nick Drozda, and Tara Littlefield led to the realization that many of the populations were stable and that the goals of the White-Haired Goldenrod Recovery Plan were met.
2015—George P. Johnson passes away in December
George Johnson received his undergraduate and master’s degrees at Western Kentucky University and published a flora on the vascular plants of Barren County. He received his Ph.D. from North Carolina State University, working on the chinkapin chestnuts. He taught at Lindsey Wilson College for four years, before accepting a position at Arkansas Tech University in 1990. In 2015, he was promoted to full professor and honored for 25 years of service. Throughout his career, George remained active in botanical collecting, herbarium work, mentoring students, and publishing articles, and was co-editor of the 2014 volume on the Atlas of the Vascular Plants of Arkansas. He was particularly interested in working to preserve and enhance the herbaria in Arkansas and in developing a digital database of the collections and was a key figure in working with other southeastern U.S. curators to build a database of all SEUS collections, which culminated in the SERNEC website. George was held in very high regard by his friends and associates; for more on his life and career, see the 2016 obituary (from which this entry was copied) written by his student and colleague Travis Marsico: J. Bot. Res. Inst. Texas 10(1):295–298.
2016—Transfer of the Western Kentucky University Herbarium (WKU) to the Austin Peay State University Herbarium (APSC) in Clarksville, TN
Both the current curator at APSC, Dwayne Estes, and the previous curator, E. Wayne Chester, did considerable research on the Kentucky flora and their herbarium continues to be well supported and very active. Mason Brock was hired in 2016 to oversee the APSC collection and integrate the Medley collection into their herbarium. He served this role until 2022. The WKU Herbarium was established in 1967, and the sequence of curators included E.O. Beal, Kenneth Nicely, Zack Murrell, Lawrence Alice, and Robert Neidlinger. It included several significant sets of specimens, including those of noted aquatic plant authority E.O. Beal, western Kentucky collections of Raymond Athey, the Barren County flora by George Johnson, and the large collection of Max Medley (previously transferred from UofL). The total number of specimens transferred to APSC was about 68,000. WKU kept a small collection of herbarium specimens for teaching purposes. So the collections found a good home at APSC (at the time of needed transfer, no Kentucky herbarium was able to accept the specimens), but it is sad that university faculty and administrators at WKU (and a number of other institutions across the country in recent years) have lost interest in maintaining an active program of floristic research and herbarium collections, especially in an age of biodiversity loss and climate change.
2016—Vascular Plants and Plant Communities of Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site, Ballard County, Kentucky, by Ralph Thompson and Katrina Rivers Thompson in J. Bot Res. Inst. Texas 10:245–266.
Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site is a 22-acre (8.9-ha) park in Ballard County, Kentucky, just outside the town of Wickliffe, 2.9 miles from the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. It features a prehistoric Mississippian culture archaeological site (A.D. 1000–1350), of earthen mounds linked with part of the Angle Phase of Mississippian culture sites along the Ohio River and Mississippi Rivers in Illinois and Kentucky. Wickliffe Mounds operates a museum at the site for interpretation of the ancient Mississippian culture. A total of 342 taxa were documented from several communities: loess bluff ravine, slope, upland mesophytic forest, woodland thicket, wildlife management area, and culturally derived areas. Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site became part of the Kentucky park system in 2004, a Kentucky Archeological Landmark, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
2016—Tara Littlefield becomes President of the KNPS, replacing Zeb Weese. Tara is the state botanist and manager of the Plant Conservation and Biological Assessment Branch at the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves. She has over 17 years of experience as a heritage biologist (botany and ecology) and natural area conservation leadership. She also coordinates the state Plant Conservation Alliance, a public private partnership working on rare plants and community conservation and serves on the board of the Kentucky Native Plant Society. Tara has a B.S. in Biochemistry from University of Louisville, M.S. in Forestry/Plant Ecology from the University of Kentucky and is currently pursuing a Ph.D at the University of Kentucky in Forest/Natural Resource Conservation. Much of her work involves rare species surveys, general floristic inventories, natural areas inventory, biological research, acquisition/protection of natural areas, rare plant/community restoration and recovery, and biological program development and management.
Tara continues to lead the KNPS into the 2020s, publishing the newsletter, helping to organize events, initiating the iNaturalist, botanical symposium and plant conservation alliance initiatives and in many ways helping to maintain interest in the recognition and preservation of Kentucky’s natural heritage.
2016—Donald S. Dott, Jr. retires as Director of the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission in July
Don Dott retires after 18 years serving as Director of the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission. Under his leadership, the state’s protected lands have grown into 63 preserves with over 27,000 acres across the Commonwealth. He had previously worked, from 1985 to 1998, as an attorney in the enforcement office of the Kentucky Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Cabinet. Currently he serves on the board of the Kentucky Natural Lands Trust and is the chair of the Kentucky Land Trusts Coalition.
2016—Zeb Weese selected to be the new Director of the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission
Gov. Matt Bevin names Zeb Weese to succeed Don Dott, Jr. as the new director of the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission. Zeb had worked for the Commission and most recently as a biologist for the Kentucky Heritage Land Conservation Fund. Zeb retired in 2021.
2016—The Kentucky Plant Conservation Alliance is created
The Kentucky Plant Conservation Alliance (KYPCA) is a public private partnership of state and federal agencies, land managers, academic researchers, botanical gardens, conservation horticulturists, nonprofits, conservation groups, private sector/consultants, community scientists, and volunteers committed to protecting native plants and natural communities of conservation concern with a central goal of preventing plant extinctions. The Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves and Kentucky Native Plant Society both recognized the need for a greater focus on rare plants and formed this alliance in 2016 to facilitate collaboration among existing conservation groups in the state by providing a framework to bring together the botanical community on focused priority plant conservation projects across the Commonwealth. Priority projects are coordinated primarily by botanists and conservation staff at the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves (OKNP) and collaborative meetings/field days/workdays, outreach and volunteer building has been organized primarily by the Kentucky Native Plant Society (KNPS). The KYPCA is also linked with national, regional, and state alliance initiatives such as the Georgia Plant Conservation Alliance, that help us learn how to build plant conservation most effectively in Kentucky. We seek to prevent plant extinctions and preserve natural heritage for future generations by better leveraging resources of existing partnerships as well as building new partnerships to expand the collective capability of plant conservation in Kentucky.
2016-White fringeless Orchid (Platanthera integrilabia) is added as threatened under the Endangered Species Act after over 20 years waiting on the candidate list. OKNP oversees the monitoring, management, and recovery of this species in Kentucky.
2017—The Herbarium at Eastern Kentucky University moves into a new facility in the New Science Building
In September and October of 2017, herbarium specimens at EKU were moved from their long-time homes in the Memorial Science Building to a new seven-room complex in the New Science Building with all new herbarium cabinets (mostly double-wide). Included are rooms for pressing and drying, a room for imaging, a workroom for mounting specimens and research, the main herbarium room with 80 double wide cabinets on compactors, a curator’s office, a graduate student office, and a library. In addition, there are another 15 double wide cabinets arranged around the perimeter of the main room and in the other rooms. Teaching specimens are now in the prep room for the botany lab, and this room can also be used for pressing and drying specimens. Both the herbarium complex and botany lab are on the first floor of the New Science Building. The hallway room numbers for the new herbarium are NSB 1204, 1206, 1207, 1212, and 1220. Ron Jones curated the collection from 1981 until 2013, when the number of specimens surpassed 75,000. Brad Ruhfel has served as curator since 2013, and with the help of assistant curator Robert Pace, has directed the completion of the data basing and imaging projects (see 2014 NSF grant above) and the transfer of the database to the SERNEC system in 2014 and supervised the move of the herbarium to the New Science Building in 2017.
2017—Berea College Herbarium, recently designated as the Berea College, Ralph L. Thompson Herbarium, with over 24,000 mounted specimens, was transferred to EKU in Fall, 2017. With the merger of the Berea College and Centre College Herbaria with EKU, the total collection stands at about 116,000 specimens, making the EKU Herbarium collection the third largest collection in the Interior Low Plateau Province (see map below), behind the collections at Indiana University and Austin Peay State University (as of 2022).
There are now only four other Kentucky herbaria of over 20,000 specimens: Northern Kentucky University, University of Kentucky (two collections, one in Forestry Department and one in Agriculture Department), Morehead State University, and Murray State University.
2017—Senate OKs Bill Updating Kentucky Law Governing Hemp Growing
Bruce Schreiner of Associated Press reported that the State Senate passed legislation that would update Kentucky law setting rules for hemp production in Kentucky, which is at the national forefront in the crop’s comeback. Senators voted 35-0 after little discussion to send the measure to the House. It was a big contrast from four years ago, when the state’s original law that laid the groundwork for Kentucky farmers to eventually grow hemp drew stiff resistance. Kentucky’s experiment with hemp production is yielding more acreage and processors. State agricultural officials approved 209 applications from growers, allowing them to produce up to 12,800 acres of hemp this year. Experimental projects began in Kentucky with a mere 33 acres in 2014. Last year, 137 growers were approved to plant up to 4,500 acres. Hemp also got a limited reprieve from the 2014 federal Farm Bill, which allows state agriculture departments to designate hemp projects for research and development. The bill includes restrictions on who can grow hemp and provides an appeals process for those that have been refused licenses.
2017—The Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) program is not renewed in Kentucky, setting back over 20 years of conservation work creating native grass restoration areas and riparian buffers on Kentucky’s farmland. The program, since its inception in 1998, had enrolled many thousands of acres of farmland in native grass and pollinator restoration or riparian buffer habitats. The cancellation of this program will have negative effects on the formally enrolled conservation acreages, many of which are being converted back to agricultural land.
2017—Climate change effects on Kentucky flora and croplands
The following information has been gleaned from several articles published on the effects of climate change in Kentucky over the next 50 years:
- increased precipitation, but also increased evaporation due to higher temperatures, so that the total amount of water running into rivers or ground water will decrease, leading to more droughts.
- increased number of days with temperatures above 95 degrees F.
- increased flooding due to more heavy rainfalls.
- longer growing seasons may benefit certain crops, but increased drought is likely to decrease yield in others, especially corn.
- forest cover is likely to remain about the same but expect changes in composition as the more heat tolerant species (oaks and hickories) replace the less heat tolerant species (sugar maple and birches). Forest productivity will likely decrease and damage from insects and disease will increase.
- spring flowering species will break dormancy earlier in the year and fall flowering species will bloom later in the year.
- weedy species (such as poison ivy and ragweed) will tend to grow better at the increased carbon dioxide levels, warmer weather, and lengthened seasons (note increase of Lamium species (purple deadnettle and henbit) in recent early springs after warm winters—entire fields covered by the purple-flowering plants, and more recently whole fields of the invasive bulbous buttercup, Ranunculus bulbosus). Another factor in favor of exotic species over native ones is that they tend to be more generalists and more adaptable to changing conditions.
- seasonal changes will affect pollinators and seed dispersal, and could affect the successful establishment of new populations, and rare plants and plants with restricted habitat requirements will be more affected (ice age changes occurred more slowly over 1,000s of years, and many plants were able to migrate to more suitable habitats, but current climate changes are too rapid, and it is likely that many native plants will become extinct as a result).
2017—Joyce Bender retires from the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission. Joyce had a 30-year career at KSNPC as a land manager and plant ecologist, where she primarily managed the state’s nature preserve system. Joyce continues to be involved with conservation issues, including serving on the Board of the Kentucky Conservation Committee. From the KCC website: “She continues to assist with natural areas management and to educate the public about being good stewards. During Joyce’s career, she reviewed legislation and reported on potential impacts for natural resources relating to her agency mission.” In 2017 a hiking trail at Crooked Creek Nature Preserve in Lewis County was named in her honor (photo below).
2018—Gathering of KY botanists to welcome Rob Naczi, Arthur Cronquist Curator of North American flora at the New York Botanical Garden (NY) and former professor at Northern Kentucky University, to the EKU Herbarium (EKY).
2018—Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves is established through the consolidation of the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission, the Kentucky Wild Rivers System, and the Kentucky Heritage Land Conservation Fund. See: https://www.lanereport.com/102081/2018/06/office-of-kentucky-nature-preserves-established/
2019—Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves grows the state’s rare plant conservation program under the leadership of Tara Littlefield from two staff botanists/ecologists to seven staff botanists/ecologists. These state botany/ecology positions focus on botanical inventories, rare plant monitoring, plant status assessments, and rare plant recovery and conservation efforts throughout the state.
2019—OKNP begins the Kentucky Botanists Big Year competition on iNaturalist. “Help us spread the love of botanizing throughout Kentucky! Find the most plant species in Kentucky in 2019 and help contribute to our plant atlas and other conservation projects. Using the iNaturalist app and site, we will build a collection of observations of Kentucky native plant species.”
This competition is now an annual event hosted by the KNPS.
2019—Brad Ruhfel leaves EKU in January for a position at University of Michigan, and EKU begins search for new Botanist/Curator.
2019—Dayle Saar retires from Murray State University, and a new Botanist, Dr. Suneeti Jog, is hired to teach botany courses and curate the Murray State University herbarium but leaves after one year.
2019—Report on health of Kentucky Forests, including status of Emerald Ash Borer, Hemlock Woolly Adelgid, Gypsy Moth, and others (including newly reported problems with tuliptree and sugarberry), see: https://eec.ky.gov/Natural-Resources/Forestry/forest-health/Documents/2019%20Forest%20Health%20Highlights.pdf
2019—Dr. William (Bill) Bryant passes away. (from his obituary): Bill Bryant lived an amazing life as a generous friend, mentor, teacher, scholar, and expert on Kentucky natural history. He grew up on a farm in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, where he learned the value of land and its importance to the natural world, agriculture, and human civilization. Bill earned his BS at Tennessee Tech University, Cookeville, and his MS and PhD degrees at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He joined the biology faculty at Thomas More University, Crestview Hill, Kentucky, and for 37 years taught biology, botany, ecology, aquatic biology, and natural history and served as department chair for many years. Bill was an outstanding researcher who authored and co-authored many scholarly publications on Kentucky plant ecology and natural history. Throughout his tenure at Thomas More, Bill led numerous nature walks and taught outdoor classes at Boone County Cliffs Nature Preserves, Flora Cliffs Sanctuary, the Dinsmore Homestead, Anderson County Historical Society, Shakertown, and the Great Smokies, among other events. Bill’s legacy will stand as he taught everyone in his path about life and nature—those individuals he taught and encountered, will advance the remarkable life he led.
2019-2021—Dr. Melanie Link-Perez is hired as an Assistant Professor at EKU to teach courses in the Department of Biological Sciences and to curate the herbarium. Dr. Link-Pérez, a native of southwestern Ohio, earned a master’s degree in plant community ecology and a doctoral degree in plant systematics, both from Miami University in Oxford. Her research broadly focuses on plant systematics, processes and patterns of speciation and diversification, and historical biogeography, with an emphasis on ferns and lycophytes. She is also involved in science education research, particularly in botanical education, active learning, and inquiry-type lab experiences.
2019—Robert Pace is hired as Lab Manager/Collections Manager at EKU, and one of his duties will be to maintain and update the database of the EKU Herbarium and Branson Museum. This is a significant development as this will allow Robert, who developed the current database for the EKU Herbarium, to continue to be involved in its maintenance and updates.
2019—Dr. William S. (Stan) Davis passed away on October 16. “After serving in the Korean War as a Naval officer, he went on to complete his PhD at UCLA. Subsequently and for over 30 years, Stan was a tenured professor at the University of Louisville in the Department of Biology, where he helped to maintain their herbarium and taught multiple courses. He contributed to the field of botany through journal articles related to his lifelong research passion, the study of Malacothrix speciation in California.”
2020—Dr. Suman Neupane is hired to teach botany courses and serve as herbarium curator at Murray State University (MUR) (but leaves in fall 2023 (and the university is again in need of a botanist.)
2020—The Kentucky Botanical Symposium 2020.
On December 11, 2020, KNPS held its 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 to learn about what’s going on in the world of Kentucky Botany. Despite the pandemic year, it was considered important to continue this event. Over 120 people joined online for several hours of informative presentations and interesting discussions.
2020—Dr. Alan Weakley expands his flora to include all the southeastern U.S. as well as adjacent regions (See map below). This digital format allows for the extraction of a specific flora for any region (i.e., Appalachian, or Interior Low Plateau/Interior Highlands) or any state or portion of a state within the flora region. These floras are regularly updated and available at: https://ncbg.unc.edu/research/unc-herbarium/floras/
2020—Spring Wildflower Meeting at Natural Bridge State Park is cancelled for the first time since 1986.
As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, a virtual meeting wasplanned for 2021. In lieu of an in-person Wildflower Weekend, the Kentucky Native Plant Society hosted a virtual Wildflower Week, whichh included virtual events from April 10th through April 17th, including a week-long, statewide BotanyBlitz on iNaturalist. This was an opportunity to broaden spring wildflower scope to the entire state of Kentucky and allow us to highlight natural areas across the state.
2020—Mason Brock describes 12 new state records for the Kentucky Flora in Phytoneuron 2020-6: 1–8. Several of these records were discovered in Max Medleys historic collection that was recently integrated into the Austin Peay State University Herbarium (APSC)
2020—Dr. Vicki A. Funk passes away.
Vicki was one of the world’s most influential botanists over the last 50 years. A long-time curator and research botanist at the Smithsonian Institute, and an expert on tropical Asteraceae, Vicki was born in Owensboro, KY, received her BS and MS at Murray State University, and her Ph.D. in 1980 from Ohio State University; her dissertation dealt with a genus of tropical Asteraceae. The author of over 300 scientific publications and was also involved in the authorship of nine books. Vicki received numerous awards and recognitions throughout her career, culminating with the most prestigious national award for plant systematists, the Asa Gray Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018, and most significant international award, the Linnaean Medal from the Linnaean Society in 2020. A strong supporter of herbaria and botanical gardens, Vicki returned to Kentucky in November 2016 to deliver a speech at Tom Sawyer State Park with the suggestion by her good friend and Louisville resident, Pat Haragan. The event was to raise money and awareness for the newly planned Waterfront Botanical Garden in Louisville. Throughout her career, Vicki worked and volunteered in numerous capacities to enhance our botanical knowledge and our understanding of the natural world. From humble beginnings in Kentucky, Vicki Funk rose to the highest echelons of her profession.
See this link for a full biography: https://nmnh.typepad.com/files/vol23no1.pdf.
Postscript: A new species from the Ecuadorian Andes, Xenophyllum funkianum J.Calvo, was recently described and named in honor of Vicki A. Funk (1947–2019), who greatly contributed to the understanding of the family Compositae worldwide. It grows in the dry superparamo at elevations of 4,100–4,300 m in the provinces of Bolívar and Chimborazo. The species was first collected by Funk and Mauricio Bonifacino in the Mt. Chimborazo area in April 2018. From Plant Press, Vol. 23, No. 2, April 2020.
2020—Waterfront Botanical Garden in Louisville is partially complete and is now open for visitors. (contributed by Pat Haragan): Louisville’s Waterfront Botanical Gardens, under continuing construction, has had an interesting history sitting on 23 acres of land that was once the Ohio Street Landfill Site. After the landfill closed in 1973, rigorous testing by the EPA, as well as a full environmental impact assessment began on the property. Deemed safe for use as a botanical garden, the Master Plan was drawn up and completed in 2014. With stellar views of the Louisville skyline, the Ohio River, and the wooded slopes along Beargrass Creek, the land was purchased from the city in 2017 and ready for construction. Today, Phase 1 (out of 3) is near completion. Considered the “core” of the botanical gardens, this Phase hosts the Graeser Family Education Center; the Beargrass Creek pathway; several other water features, and the Ellen T. Leslie Botanical Classrooms. The latter will be the focus of many educational classes in the future.
With continued fundraising and donations, Phases 2 and 3 will complete the garden and include a Visitor Center; Conservatory; Children’s Garden; Japanese Gardens; a restaurant and gift shop besides many gardens that showcase native, ornamental, medicinal, pollinator, and culinary plants sprinkled throughout the property. For more information on this remarkable urban treasure, visit waterfrontgardens.org. (photos below from this website)
2020—Tennessee-Kentucky Plant Atlas is launched.
From Joey Shaw, Foundation Professor, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga: The development of this website was made possible because of the Southeastern Network of Expertise and Collections (SERNEC) National Science Foundation award #1410069, entitled: The Key to the Cabinets: Building and Sustaining a Research Database for a Global Biodiversity Hotspot (Award Number: 1410069 /1410087), which allowed us to digitize nearly 100% of all of the herbarium specimens in Tennessee and Kentucky. It is edited and managed by a small consortium of Kentucky and Tennessee botanists, but all botanists, photographers, and naturalists may contribute through submitting information or pictures to Joey Shaw. Nomenclature of the TNKY Plant Atlas is based on: Flora of Southern and Mid-Atlantic States (Weakley, A. in prep.), the Guide to the Vascular Plants of Tennessee (Chester et al. 2014), and the Plant Life of Kentucky (Jones, R. 2005), with light modifications of some plant groups so that we follow the rules of nomenclature, but we are up-to-date as possible. For a species to be mapped in the Atlas, its occurrence in Kentucky and Tennessee must be documented by at least one herbarium specimen, although we do have a few species whose documentation is pending, and these will show up on the site without being mapped.
The TNKY was initially populated by a January 2019 data pull from the SERNEC portal. All data from all herbaria in Tennessee, except for GSMNP, and all herbaria from Kentucky were all pulled for the two-state checklist of 3592 species and lesser taxa. We plan to update our records once or twice a year as new data is added to the SERNEC portal. Furthermore, the Atlas contains many photographs taken in Tennessee and Kentucky of live plants in their natural habitats. Photographs were vetted for accuracy and quality by Joey Shaw. The species data on morphology and ecology were added by Joey Shaw and Dwayne Estes.
The TNKY Plant Atlas project is part of the University of South Florida family of Plantatlas.org sites, which provided the web development for this site. All data are curated by the membership herbaria of EKU and the Tennessee Herbarium Consortium.
Update on the Tennessee-Kentucky Plant Atlas—a new version was launched in June 2021.
This new version is located at: https://tennessee-kentucky.plantatlas.usf.edu/
Citation for the TN-KY atlas is:
Shaw, J., D. Estes, B. Ruhfel, A.B. Morris, and T.R. Littlefield. 2023 Tennessee-Kentucky Plant Atlas. [S.M. Landry and K.N. Campbell (original application development), USF Water Institute. University of South Florida]. University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Austin Peay State University, University of Michigan, Furman University, and Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission.
2021—The KNPS hosts a virtual wildflower weekend at Natural Bridge State Resort Park.
The centerpiece of the Wildflower Week activities was the week-long BotanyBlitz. From Saturday, April 10, through Saturday, April 17, KNPS encouraged everyone to visit parks and natural areas throughout the Commonwealth, find and photograph native plants (with a focus on those in bloom), and upload them to the BotanyBlitz project. Besides the KNPS BotanyBlitz, several other natural areas in KY had BotanyBlitzes during the week.
2021—Running Buffalo Clover (Trifolium stoloniferum) is removed from the Endangered Species list based on dozens of new populations in over 10 new county records documented by Kentucky botanists over the past decade. OKNP botanists continue to work on the post delisting monitoring of the species and create cooperative management agreements with partners to make sure this species is still conserved into the future.
2021—Zeb Weese retires from the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves.
2021—Melanie Link-Perez resigns from EKU and a search begins for a replacement to teach introductory and advanced botany courses and to curate the EKU Herbarium.
2022—A new slate of officers for the Kentucky Native Plant Society is approved for 2022-2024
- President – Jeff Nelson
- Vice-President – Kendall McDonald
- Treasurer – Ted Brancheau
- Secretary – Kelly Watson
Directors
- Heidi Braunreiter
- Wes Cunningham
- Jen Koslow
- David Taylor
Immediate Past President
- Tara Littlefield
2022—Dr. Sally Chambers is hired as an Assistant Professor at Eastern Kentucky University to teach courses in the Department of Biological Sciences and to curate the herbarium. Dr. Chambers is a plant ecologist and evolutionary biologist, specializing in ferns and species of conservation concern. She is a native of Owensboro, Kentucky and obtained her BS in Natural Resource and Conservation Management in 2009 from the University of Kentucky. She received her Ph.D. from Purdue University in 2014 and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida until 2017, then worked as a Research Botanist for five years at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Florida. In her research endeavors, she uses field, computational, and molecular tools to address questions regarding plant diversity and distributions.
2022—Climate Change Threatens North American Wildflowers—new study documents the threat, see:
From the website: “Botanists from Carnegie Museum of Natural History and an international team of researchers warn of risks posed to North American ephemeral wildflowers caused by warmer spring temperatures in a recent study published in Nature Communication. Researchers surveyed data from 5,522 individual herbarium specimens collected from 1901 to 2020, representing 40 species from Asia, Europe, and North America, to analyze the phenological mismatch—or discrepancies in timing—between the leaf-out periods for understory ephemerals and deciduous canopy trees. The specimens show that sensitivity to spring temperature for wildflowers occurs across the three continents, but that canopy trees in North America are significantly more sensitive to spring temperatures and experience longer springs when compared to trees in Asia and Europe. This dynamic results in shorter spring light windows for North American wildflowers.”
2022—Update on book-published state floras for SEUS
As of 2022, there are now published books on the floras for these states in the SEUS (with date of publication): North and South Carolina (1968), Florida (1992, 2011, and continuing volumes for specific sets of families), Kentucky (2005), Virginia (2012), and Tennessee (2015). There are no single-volume state floras published for Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, or Mississippi (floristic treatments for these states do exist in digital formats as available through Alan Weakley’s Flora of the Southeastern U.S., and available at https://ncbg.unc.edu/research/unc-herbarium/floras/).
LEST WE FORGET
A final note of thanks to all those who helped facilitate the growth of the Kentucky Native Plant Society from 1986 to the present by volunteering as officers, directors, committee chairs, newsletter editors, writers of newsletter articles, and those who regularly participated in field trips, workshops, and other activities. In particular we would like to remember those that held leadership roles as officers or directors and have passed on as of 2022: Sherri Evans (1999), Rebecca Waldridge (Becky Sensenig, 2003), Willem Meijer (2003), Charlie Lapham (2009), Hal Bryan (2010), Steve Sensenig (2011), R. Hughes Walker (2011), Landon McKinney (2014), Tom Barnes (2014), Mary Carol Cooper (2016), Joyce Porter (2016), Clara Wieland (2018), and Varley Wiedeman (2020).
Dr. Jones is a native of Nashville, TN, with degrees from David Lipscomb College and Vanderbilt University. He was a professor of Biological Sciences for over 30 years at EKU and curator of the EKU Herbarium and is now retired. His research and teaching interest was in field botany, conducting studies in southeastern U.S., Costa Rica, and Ecuador, and he is author or coauthor of two books on the floras of Kentucky and Tennessee.