Become Part of BotanyBlitz 2023! April 8 – April 15

Leading up to Wildflower Weekend will be our week long BotanyBlitz 2023, which will run from Saturday, April 8, through Saturday, April 15. This is the third year for our BotanyBlitz, which is an effort to document as many plant species as possible within Kentucky during the week preceding Wildflower Weekend 2023. The BotanyBlitz will be again hosted on the community science website iNaturalist, and participants will be using the iNaturalist mobile app (or website, if your preferred camera is not a smartphone!) to upload photos of budding and blooming plants they observe in local parks, state parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and nature preserves.

We encourage anyone interested to sign up for an iNaturalist account if you’re not already a user, and join the BotanyBlitz 2023 project (just click “Join” in the top right corner of the project page), and download the mobile app for iPhone or Android.

At the end of the week, we will have a map and totals by numbers, species, and by each person of all the great collections we found! Additionally, expert botanists and people with a keen identifying eye will be able to add comments to your specimens on why they agree or disagree with a certain identification, so we can learn better ways to ID plants in the future.

In 2022, BotanyBlitz was a great success. We had well over 100 observers who made over 4,400 observations of 536 species of plants.

Of course, you don’t need to wait till the BotanyBlitz to start making observations on iNaturalist, and wildflowers across Kentucky are already starting to show their stuff.

Kick-off BotanyBlitz 2023 with a First Day Hike on April 8

Click on image to see a full view of the map

To kick off BotanyBlitz 2023 and Wildflower Week, on Saturday, April 8, we will host a series of First Day Hikes in parks and natural areas across the Commonwealth. These easy nature walks will be led by local botanizers who know the native plant species that will be encountered in each area. As the First Day hikes are meant to start the BotanyBlitz project, we are hoping that folks who plan to participate will sign up for an iNaturalist account (if they don’t already have one) and join the BotanyBlitz 2023 project.

Please fill out the form at the bottom of this page if you are going to participate in one of the First Day hikes. If you have any questions email us at WildflowerWeekend2023@knps.org.


List of First Day Hikes

10:00 AM EDT Pine Creek Barrens Nature Preserve, Shepherdsville KY: 1.5 miles, easy loop trail. Join Kentucky Native Plant society member Alan Abbott on a spring barrens walk through the preserve, just a short drive from Louisville, KY. Meet and park in the Pine Creek Barrens parking area (1264 Pine Creek Trail, Shepherdsville, KY 40165).

10:00 AM EDT St. Anne Woods and Wetlands, Melbourne KY: 0.7 miles, easy walk, loop trail. Join Northern Kentucky University professor, Dr. Maggie Whitson, on this walk through the wetlands and floodplain of the Ohio River. Trails may be muddy, so choose footwear accordingly. Park and meet at the St. Anne Convent visitor parking lot (off Mary Ingles Hwy, Melbourne, KY 41059).

12:00 PM CDT Woodland Walk Trail & Honker Lake Trail, Land Between the Lakes (LBL) National Recreation Area, Eddyville KY: 2.5 miles, easy walk, loop trail. Walk with Murray State graduate student Gage Barnes along the Woodland Walk Trail & part of Honker Lake Trail and see a diversity of woodland plant species. Meet and park at the Woodlands Nature Station parking lot (3146 Silver Trail Road, Cadiz, KY 42211).

10:00 AM CDT River Styx Spring Trail & Dixon Cave Trail, Mammoth Cave National Park, Park City KY: moderate hike that descends 300 ft in elevation, then ascends again. Learn with Mammoth Cave naturalists Steve Kistler, Janet Kistler, and Carol Friedman on these trails with a wide variety of spring wildflowers and impressive rock formations. Park and meet at the flagpole at the Mammoth Cave Visitors Center (1 Mammoth Cave Pkwy, Mammoth Cave, KY 42259).

10:00 AM CDT Metropolis Lake SNP, McCracken Co, KY: 1 mile, easy to moderate walk, some off trail. Join Kentucky Native Plant Society President, Jeff Nelson & KNPS Member and Nature Preserves Monitor, Bob Dunlap, on this walk through the bald cypress-tupelo swamp forest on the floodplains of Metropolis Lake SNP. In addition to the trees we should see several species of spring ephemerals in flower. If we are lucky we will also see the rare (in KY) Carolina silverbells tree (Halesia carolina) in flower. Parts of the walk may be muddy, so choose footwear accordingly. Meet at the Metropolis Lake parking area (Stafford Rd, McCracken Co., KY)


First Day Hike Registration Form

Please complete the form below if you are going to participate in one of the First Day hikes.

Wildflower Weekend 2023 – Merchandise

This year we are excited to reinstitute a great tradition from Wildflower Weekends in the past, t-shirts with a logo developed specifically for the event. After a poll of our members, we have selected the gorgeous American trout-lily (Erythronium americanum) for our native plant spotlight.

Many thanks to the artistic talents of KNPS member Kendall MacDonald (Kendall’s bio is below the items) for creating the gorgeous illustration for our 2023 Wildflower Weekend! This beautiful image is featured on an adult t-shirt, a coffee mug, a kid’s t-shirt, and an adult hoodie.

Even if you are not planning on attending Wildflower Weekend 2023, you can still purchase a shirt or coffee cup with this lovely image.


Wildflower Weekend 2023 Merchandise

All of these items are produced by the manufacturer at the time of the order. Neither KNPS nor the manufacturer maintains any inventory. Because of this returns or exchanges are not possible if you order a wrong size, color, or simply don’t like the product. Please carefully double check your order before placing it. We can make exchanges if the product arrives damaged in some way. If you have any questions or receive a damaged product, please contact us at WildflowerWeekend2023@knps.org.


Kendall McDonald, Wildflower Weekend Logo Designer

Short’s goldenrod (Solidago shortii) with Kendall McDonald

Kendall McDonald is an artist, botanist and lichenologist that grew up in Owen County, Kentucky. She developed a love for art and nature at a young age, and carried that with her into her education and career. After getting her bachelors degree in biology at Morehead State University, she started at the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves as a heritage botanist and lichenologist. For the last 5 years, she has been an active member of the Kentucky Native Plant Society as a member of planning committees and a co-editor for the Lady Slipper newsletter. Her passion for biodiversity permeates her art, as her collection mostly consists of paintings of Kentucky native species and landscapes. She combined her love of spring ephemerals and wonderful Kentucky landscapes to create the design for the t-shirt and stickers for Wildflower Weekend 2023! The design is a close up of the gorgeous native Yellow Trout Lily (Erythronium americanum) over a background of Cumberland Falls.

Successful buffalo clover establishment could require high seeding rates 

By Jonathan O. C. Kubesch*,**, Frank Reith*, Dillon P. Golding*,***, Jake Sanne*, Forrest Brown*,  Derek Hilfiker*, Joseph D. House****, Jenna Beville*, and Peter Arnold*,***** 

*Virginia Tech School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Blacksburg, VA 

**Country Home Farms, Pembroke, VA 

***Hoot Owl Hollow Farm, Woodlawn, VA 

****Indiana National Guard, West Lafayette, IN 

*****Arnold Classic Farms, Chestertown, MD 

The public is familiar with red (Trifolium pratense) and white clover (Trifolium repens) growing throughout the Kentucky Commonwealth. However, North America, from Oregon to Florida, is home to a plethora of native clover species. Buffalo clover (Trifolium reflexum) is one of several clover species native to the eastern U.S.A. (Kubesch et al., 2022; Kubesch, 2020). This species demonstrates annual to short-lived perennial life histories, and has potential as a horticultural or agronomic crop (Quesenberry et al., 2003; Kubesch, 2020).  

Current efforts to increase native clover populations involve laudable efforts regarding site management, as well as conservation horticulture (e.g Littlefield, 2022). After a site is prepared for planting, plugs are produced. Conservation horticulture work currently executes the following procedure: 

  1. Germinate seeds on filter paper in petri dishes (Figure 1) 
  1. Transfer seedlings to cell pack trays 
  1. Pot up plants into small pots (Figure 2) 
  1. Plug individuals into spaced nurseries or maintain on benches for seed production 
Figure 1. Running buffalo clover (Trifolium stoloniferum) germinating on filter paper under laboratory conditions. Smyth Hall, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA January 30, 2023. 
Figure 2. Running buffalo clover (Trifolium stoloniferum) growing in the greenhouse. University Greenhouses Bay 7A, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA February 3, 2023. 

In restoration and agronomic contexts, seeding clover has a logistic and resource advantage over plugging clovers. Seeding clover can reduce the need for intensive planting efforts, reduce soil disturbance, and ease transportation of unique plant material. Seeding approaches require a basis for setting a seeding rate and dates. Often, clovers are timed for planting between Valentines’ Day and St. Patrick’s Day in the Upper South. Introduced red and white clovers are commonly frost seeded every several years into cool-season pastures (Kubesch et al., 2020). 

Seeding clovers can also take advantage of physiological mechanisms that improve seed establishment. In the field, frost seeding involves defoliation of an existing grassland stand, broadcasting clover seed onto the stand, and letting freeze-thaw cycles incorporate the seed into the soil surface. Compared to many native and introduced grasses, clover seed coats allow the seed to survive freeze-thaw incorporation into the soil surface. Quesenberry et al (2003) reports that buffalo clover has a similar seed weight to introduced clovers. A common rate of pasture frost seeding is 4 lb/A red clover and 2 lb/A white clover (Kubesch et al., 2020). 

Optimizing rather than maximizing seeding rate is desirable given the limited seed availability of buffalo clover as well as the desire to increase planting area in restoration attempts. Managers want to get a good stand with as little seed as necessary. In addition to generating stand densities that justify direct seeding over plugging, an optimal seeding rate should generate ground cover that conserves soil as well as meets existing criteria for composition.  

The present experiment sought to determine whether a 2 lb/A or a 4lb/A seeding rate can optimize buffalo clover establishment relative to white and red clover. This objective was measured through emergence as well as cover assessments. The hypothesis of this study was that the higher seeding rate will achieve the aforementioned targets comparable to, or greater than, red clover and white clover. 

Continue reading Successful buffalo clover establishment could require high seeding rates 

Wildflower Week 2023 is Coming Together!

April 8 – 16, First Day Hikes, BotanyBlitz, & Wildflower Weekend

Design by Kendall McDonald

In less than 2 months, the Kentucky Native Plant Society’s Wildflower Week 2023 will begin!

Join with other nature lovers, families, community scientists, amateur naturalists, and professional botanists, from across the Commonwealth, as we explore the beauty and diversity of Kentucky’s native plant communities in April.

We are excited to be making some big changes this year: while our friends at Natural Bridge SRP have hosted Wildflower Weekend for over 30 years, we want to give parks across the state the opportunity to show off their unique ecology and geology, as well as their spring flora. To accomplish this, we plan to alternate Wildflower Weekend locations between Natural Bridge SRP in even-numbered years, and other Kentucky parks in odd-numbered years. For Wildflower Weekend 2023 (April 14th-16th) we’re delighted to be meeting at beautiful Cumberland Falls SRP & the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area.

But our celebration isn’t just limited to Wildflower Weekend itself — continuing our new tradition, we will be holding a week-long BotanyBlitz (April 8-15) hosted on iNaturalist. To help us kick off the BotanyBlitz, we will host a number of BotanyBlitz First Day Hikes in natural areas across the Commonwealth. The First Day Hikes and the BotanyBlitz will be opportunities to broaden our spring wildflower scope to the entire state of Kentucky and allow us to highlight natural areas across the state!

Details are still being worked out, but we anticipate opening up registration to all of the events in early March. Kentucky Native Plant Society members will be given the first opportunity to register for the events, before they are opened up to the general public.

We have also created a page for Wildflower Week 2023, where the latest information will be posted as it is developed. Please visit and bookmark.


BotanyBlitz 2023

Leading up to Wildflower Weekend will be our third annual, week-long BotanyBlitz, which will run from Saturday, April 8, through Saturday, April 15, and will be hosted on the iNaturalist website. A BotanyBlitz is a community-science event that focuses on finding and identifying as many plant species as possible within a designated location and time period. To join in the fun, please log in or sign up for an iNaturalist account, then head to the BotanyBlitz project page and click “Join” in the top right corner.

Commencing on Saturday, April 8, and continuing all week, we are encouraging everyone to visit parks and natural areas throughout the Commonwealth, to find and photograph native plants (with an emphasis on those in bloom) and upload them to iNat. If you’re not sure how to identify a plant you see, you can use iNat’s excellent mobile app to suggest identifications based on your photos, and iNat’s community of expert botanists and naturalists can add comments to your “digital specimens” to confirm or help correct the ID.

BotanyBlitz 2023 First Day Hikes

To kick off 2023’s BotanyBlitz, on Saturday, April 8 we will host a series of First Day Hikes in parks and natural areas across the Commonwealth. These easy nature walks will be led by local botanizers and iNat users who are familiar with the local native flora you’ll encounter. Don’t forget to make sure you’ve joined the BotanyBlitz iNat project before embarking on the hike! And if you’re new to iNaturalist, we recommend signing up for an account, then joining our BotanyBlitz project, and downloading the iNaturalist mobile app in advance of the hike to give yourself time to “test drive” the app. You can check out these video tutorials to get started!

Although the First Day Hikes are intended to give the BotanyBlitz a strong start, you do not need to be an iNat user to sign up for these hikes — all wildflower enthusiasts are welcome to join in!


Wildflower Weekend 2023

The culmination of Wildflower Week will be our 34th annual Wildflower Weekend, scheduled for April 14, 15, & 16. The weekend will offer wildflower hikes Friday afternoon and all day Saturday, led by some of the best botanists in the state. These hikes will explore the region’s rich natural heritage and resources in Cumberland State Resort Park and the Big South Fork Recreation Area. Friday evening there will be a campfire social gathering to meet your fellow native plant enthusiasts. On Saturday night we will have a KNPS member meeting (the general public is welcome), several botanically oriented talks, and a native plant raffle.

This event is open to the public and kid-friendly. Admission is $10 for adults, $3 for ages 13-17, and free for ages 12 & under.


In June of 2022, a KNPS member posted an image on the KNPS Facebook group page of an old Wildflower Weekend t-shirt she had found in a thrift store. Asking among several longtime members, it turns out that in the 1990s, and into the early 2000’s, KNPS produced t-shirts for each Wildflower Weekend. This was such a fun idea, we have decided to bring back this great tradition. We wanted the design to be similar to the 1991 shirt, with native plant species as the central element. We also wanted to use species that would likely be flowering (or showing attractive foliage) in mid-April, in the area around Cumberland Falls. We surveyed the KNPS membership to find out which wildflower the community wanted to see on a t-shirt, and the winning species was the lovely American Trout Lily (Erythronium americanum).

Many thanks to the artistic talents of KNPS member Kendall MacDonald for creating this gorgeous illustration for our 2023 Wildflower Weekend! This beautiful image will be featured on an adult t-shirt, a coffee mug, a kid’s t-shirt, and an adult hoodie and all will be available for sale on our KNPS Gear Shop when event registration begins in early March.


Kendall McDonald, Wildflower Weekend Logo Designer

Short’s goldenrod (Solidago shortii) with Kendall McDonald

Kendall McDonald is an artist, botanist and lichenologist that grew up in Owen County, Kentucky. She developed a love for art and nature at a young age, and carried that with her into her education and career. After getting her bachelors degree in biology at Morehead State University, she started at the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves as a heritage botanist and lichenologist. For the last 5 years, she has been an active member of the Kentucky Native Plant Society as a member of planning committees and a co-editor for the Lady Slipper newsletter. Her passion for biodiversity permeates her art, as her collection mostly consists of paintings of Kentucky native species and landscapes. She combined her love of spring ephemerals and wonderful Kentucky landscapes to create the design for the t-shirt and stickers for Wildflower Weekend 2023! The design is a close up of the gorgeous native Yellow Trout Lily (Erythronium americanum) over a background of Cumberland Falls.

Third Annual Kentucky Botanical Symposium Videos

“Coming Together to Discuss Current Botany Projects, Conservation, and Collaboration in Kentucky and Beyond”

On Thursday, January 26, 2023, the Kentucky Native Plant Society and the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves held our third annual, virtual, Botanical Symposium. Close to 200 folks were able to attend online to hear and see several presentations about our native plants and plant communities. We know that there are many who would have liked to participate, but were not able to do so. Here are videos of all of the presentations.

Presenter Bios

Download a list of presenter contacts and links discussed in the presentations as a PDF.


KNPS Updates by KNPS President Jeff Nelson

Length: 12:16


State of Kentucky Plant Conservation by Tara Littlefield

Length: 19:17


Update on the Southeastern Flora Project by Dr. Alan Weakley

Length: 23:12


Modernizing Data Collection for Field Botany by Nour Salam

Length: 16:22


Species Level Vegetation Monitoring by Justin Thomas

Length: 14:59


Advancing Plant Conservation with Genetic and Epigenetic Tools by Dr. Bridgette Williams & Dr. Christie Edwards

Length: 23:27


KNPS Conservation Award presented by Zeb Weese to Dr. Bill Martin

Length: 13:57


Buffalo clover has moderate seed trait diversity across geographic range

Jake Sanne*, Dillon P. Golding**, Peter Arnold*, Jenna Beville*, Derek Hilfiker*, Forrest Brown*, and Jonathan O. C. Kubesch*, ***

*Virginia Tech School of Plant and Environmental Sciences

**Hoot Owl Hollow Farm, Woodlawn, VA

***Country Home Farms, Pembroke, VA

Introduction

Buffalo clover (Trifolium reflexum), is a rare native clover present in the eastern United States. In Kentucky, this species occurs in the vicinity of Mammoth Cave, as well as further west. Conservation efforts in the eastern United States have maintained many of these native populations, though there is interest in using horticulture and agriculture to increase buffalo clover populations (Quesenberry et al., 2003; Kubesch, 2020; Kubesch et al., 2022). 

A limitation of these alternative approaches is the lack of data regarding the establishment of native clovers. For many rare plants, plugs are grown in nurseries and then planted to field sites (Littlefield, 2022). Even in the only published horticultural research, seed was grown into plugs for field plantings (Quesenberry et al., 2003). Buffalo clover has a fair degree of phenotypic variability in growth form, life history, and flower color across the geographic range. These differences in plant material might also suggest diversity in seed characteristics. 

Seed weight is an important seed characteristic for increasing buffalo clover populations. Seed weights are associated with increased establishment success (Catano et al., 2022; Westoby, 1998). Published seed weights of red (Trifolium pratense), white (Trifolium repens), and buffalo clover come from a publication using buffalo clover accessions from the Coastal Plain (Quesenberry et al., 2003). Coastal Plain accessions appear to have annual life histories whereas Ohio River Valley accessions appear to be short-lived biennials or perennials (Kubesch, unpublished observations). The present study sought to map and determine seed weights for buffalo clover. The authors hypothesized that Coastal Plain accessions would have different seed weights than the Ohio River Valley accessions.  

Materials and Methods

This study consisted of a mapping exercise, seed weight data collection, and then analysis. The mapping exercise discerned the positions of Coastal Plain and Ohio River Valley accessions using the geographic Fall Line as the demarcation between Coastal Plain and Ohio River Valley accessions. Accessions found on the corresponding side of the Fall Line were assigned to a Coastal Plain or Ohio River Valley. This mapping was conducted in ARCGIS software.

Seed weight data for a handful of accessions was accessible from the USDA GRIN system. Notably, these seed weight data overrepresented Coastal accessions rather than Ohio River Valley accessions. Additional data came from Quesenberry et al (2003) as well as manual measurements. Quesenberry et al (2003) selected accessions from TX, GA, MS, and FL. One accession in this study came from the Ohio River Valley. Seed from single plant selections of Cincinnati and Clarks River accessions were measured on a lab balance (Bonvoisin scale). 

Data Analysis

Seed weight was treated as a completely randomized design. Initial analysis at the state-level was considered to address potential accession grouping at local scales. Differences in seed weight between accessions from the Coastal Plain and Ohio River Valley were also considered to test other known differences in accessions (e.g. annual or biennial life history). All analyses were conducted in SAS v9.4 (SAS Institute, Cary, NC). PROC GLIMMIX coded for a simple  one-way ANOVA.

Continue reading Buffalo clover has moderate seed trait diversity across geographic range