Kentucky Native Plant Society is looking for your help to assist with monitoring Cumberland Plateau pine barrens remnants along roadsides and powerlines in the Daniel Boone National Forests (DBNF). This is a rare plant community in eastern Kentucky. Pine Barrens are open woodlands made up of a mix of sandstone outcrops, grasslands, and open pine-oak woodlands with an open understory. Historically, pine barrens were maintained by periodic fire keeping the understory and canopy open. Due to logging and fire suppression, this community is greatly reduced and altered in Kentucky. The majority of the remnant pine barrens in Kentucky are restricted to powerline corridors and roadsides in the DBNF. Consequently, many of the plants once associated with this plant community are also rare. Wood lily (Lilium philadelphicum) for example, is restricted to this habitat in Kentucky and can be found primarily on roadsides of the DBNF. Population numbers of wood lily have plummeted in recent decades. Numerous other plants of concern also depend on this habitat including Ten-lobed False Foxglove (Agalinis decemloba), Yellow Wild Indigo (Baptisia tinctoria), Bearded Skeleton-grass (Gymnopogon ambiguous), Southern Crabapple (Malus angustifolia), Appalachian sandwort (Minuartia glabra), Racemed Milkwort (Polygala polygama), Hairy Snoutbean (Rhynchosia tomentosa), Chaffseed (Schwalbea americana), Eastern Silvery Aster (Symphyotrichum concolor), and Roundleaf Flameflower (Talinum teretifolium).

Knowing where plants occur is the first step towards protecting them. If you wish to help, please fill out this Signup Form and we will give you a section of DBNF roadside/powerlines to monitor over the coming growing season. We will utilize the smartphone app iNaturalist as a means of documenting the rare plants you find.

The app iNaturalist has grown from a graduate project at U.C. Berkeley to a global community of naturalists looking to connect people and nature through technology. The goal of the app is to allow citizens scientists, like yourself, to record biodiversity. Photographs taken with your smartphone are uploaded to the app, along with location data, where naturalists from across the world help identify the organism. By posting your photographs, you can contribute to a better understanding of the range and abundance of plants and animals. Kentucky Native Plant Society will track your photographs of plants along DBNF roadsides in an effort to protect these rare plants and remnant ecosystems. Hopefully, these efforts will go a long way towards protecting the Cumberland Plateau pine barrens remnants and the rare plants associated with them.

Citizen Scientists contribute to continental scale study to assess variation in nitrogen use of red maple (Acer rubrum)

By: Steve Gougherty*
* PhD Student, Finzi Lab, Department of Biology, Boston University

Nitrogen dynamics in plants

In terrestrial ecosystems, plant growth is commonly limited by the availability of nitrogen. Nitrogen is a critical element for plant health as it is incorporated into key molecular structures such as chlorophyll, which absorbs light energy during photosynthesis, and enzymes (e.g., RuBisCo, which is responsible for fixing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as part of photosynthesis). Many plants start life with a nitrogen reserve in their seeds, but eventually come to rely on their root system to absorb nitrogen from the soil to satisfy their demand.

Acquiring nitrogen from soil can be a costly endeavor for plants, and perennial plants have developed strategies to more efficiently use the nitrogen they have already acquired. For example, deciduous trees effectively recycle nitrogen at the end of each growing season through a process known as foliar nitrogen resorption. Foliar nitrogen resorption involves the breakdown of nitrogen containing compounds (like chlorophyll and enzymes) in the leaf and the transfer to other tissues in the plant, such as developing buds. In fact, the breakdown of chlorophyll in leaves and transfer to other plant tissues is partially responsible for the ‘fall colors’ in eastern temperate forests. Even though researchers know that foliar nutrient resorption is an important component of tree’s annual nitrogen budget, extremely little is known about how variable this process is throughout geographic ranges of plants. This is an important question because understanding the nature of nitrogen limitation on plant productivity is an active area for ecologists studying energy and carbon balances of ecosystems.

Citizen Scientist role in addressing questions about red maple nitrogen use

Red maple (Acer rubrum) is one of the most abundant and broadly distributed tree species in North America (Figure 1; green shading shows approximate distribution). Its abundance and broad distribution makes it an excellent candidate to assess the potential for variation in key nutrient retention strategies, such as foliar nitrogen resorption. However, sampling red maple throughout its geographic range is a major logistical challenge for an individual researcher. As a result, I started a Citizen Science project that invites participants to sample red maple leaves in their local areas and send them to a research laboratory for processing and analysis. A broad network of Citizen Scientists is ideal for this project for several reasons: 1. Citizen Scientists know where to find red maple trees in their local areas. 2. The network allows for the potential to obtain samples from nearly the entire geographic distribution of red maple in the United States. 3. Since Citizen Scientists sample locally, it makes the two sampling time points (once when leaves are green, and once at leaf fall) feasible.

2019 was the initial year of the project and over 120 Citizen Scientists signed up to participate in the project (Figure 1; magenta dots). As leader of this project I am extremely grateful for the response we have received and look forward to disseminating our results to our Citizen Scientists and the scientific community over the course of the project. Participants interested in collecting in 2020 are welcome to sign up on our website at any time.

Getting involved in the project

Interested members of the Kentucky Native Plant Society and readers of The Lady Slipper are invited to learn more about the project at our website: sites.bu.edu/tasper . On our website we have more information about our research questions along with a signup form for participants, and sampling protocols.