Virtual Field Trips During
Wildflower Week

Besides all of the other great events during Wildflower Week 2021 , we have scheduled a virtual field trip for every day of the Week. Each day the video of the virtual hike for that day will be posted on our website at 8:30AM. The video will be available for viewing from then on. You can see all of the posted videos at our Virtual Field Trips page, so bookmark that page and check in each day.

Sat. 10th– Ferns of Anglin Falls – Join Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves botanist Rachel Cook on a virtual hike through John B. Stephenson Memorial Forest State Nature Preserve. While this Preserve is known for its beauty, Anglin Falls, it also has a great diversity of ferns with 32 species!

Sun 11th– Wildflowers of Cove Springs Park

Mon 12th– Spring Flora of Glades and Barrens at Embry Lay – Join Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves botanist Tony Romano for a tour of spring flowers and flora in a rare glade and barrens habitat complex. We’ll explore plants adapted to thin soils, fires, and grassland openings.

Tues 13th– Trilliums of Kentucky – Trilliums are an unforgettable genus of spring wildflowers with their three leaves, petals and sepals, habitat preferences, interesting floriferous smells, and pollination and seed dispersal strategies. Join Tara Littlefield and family as they explore Kentucky’s Trillium diversity across Kentucky

Wed 14th– Wildflowers of Crooked Creek State Nature Preserve

Thur 15th– Wildflowers of an Heritage Land Conservation Fund site TBD.

Fri 16th– Neat Flora of Dry Outcrops and Woodlands in the Kentucky River Valley – Cedar, ash, oaks, and honeysuckle aren’t the only things inhabiting the dry, rocky, steep habitats above the Kentucky River. Join Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves botanist Devin Rodgers for a tour of some of the neat flora adapted to these sunny, erodible, rugged, beautiful places.

Sat 17th– Early flowering plants of upland seeps, grasslands and woodlands in the Cumberland Plateau – Join Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves staff Tara Littlefield and Forest Service staff David Taylor and Claudia Cotton on a hike to see what is blooming in the upland grasslands, woodlands and seeps of the Cumberland Plateau.

Invasive Plant Corner: Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna)

By Deborah White, Kentucky Native Plant Society Board

By the end of winter, we are looking for any hope of spring, any bright color in the landscape we can find. When you see a pretty yellow flower in late winter, check to see if it is lesser celandine (Ficaria verna) before you get excited.

Description

Ficaria verna: Common License

The leaves of this invasive plant emerge in winter, and they cover the ground quickly, outcompeting many native plants. This pest plant has a single yellow flower at the end of a stem. It is closely related to buttercups (its former name is Ranunculus ficaria, and sometimes it is called fig buttercup) and, like buttercups, the flower has many stamens. There are seven to thirteen flower petals. The leaves are medium to dark green, generally heart-shaped and not lobed with wavy edges that have smooth or rounded teeth. Also, the small bulbils at the base of the plant will help identify it (see also the control section as these bulbils allow this weed to spread).

Habitat

Lesser celandine grows in riparian areas like stream banks and adjacent flat moist areas, shady woods and even lawns. Lesser celandine is found in the eastern United States, west from Texas and Missouri, as well as Washington and Oregon on the west coast.

Lesser celandine covered these shaded woods at UK Arboretum in 2019. Photo by Emily Ellingson.

How it Got Here

Lesser celandine is native to Europe, Asia and Africa. Introduced to the United States for horticultural use as a border plant, this weedy invasive is, unfortunately, still being sold. It easily escapes from gardens to nearby forests. The fingerlike bulbils and fruit can be spread by flooding, or any movement from one habitat to another, even mowing.

Lesser celandine in the United State; blue states show its presence. Map by NRCS.

Ecological Impacts

Lesser celandine can quickly form a blanket across the ground in natural areas. It crowds out native plants and depresses their reproduction. Like other invasive weeds, the elements that control these plants in their native range, whether fungus, animals or other biological controls, are absent, leaving this plant free to increase, unchallenged.

How to Control

Small infestations may be removed by pulling the plants by hand, but all plant parts must be removed to be effective. The roots and bulbils easily fall from the plants and then establish new plants!

It is also possible that covering the plants with black plastic to solarize, or heat up the soil can help kill the vegetative structures and root systems of the plants. This would be appropriate where lesser celandine is abundant.

Studies show spraying with herbicide is effective, especially if applied before other plants have emerged. Glyphosate has been used to control lesser celandine but be aware that it is not appropriate for use near aquatic habitats. A 2.5% solution may be applied when it is at least 50 degrees Fahrenheit–being extra careful to spray only lesser celandine because the herbicide will affect any plant it contacts. It may take two or even three applications and future monitoring to eliminate the plants. You will be helping our natural flora by battling this yellow invader!

References

Aulakh, Dr. Jatinder S. Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna Huds.) Identification and Management. Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.

Plants for a Future. Accessed 4/2/2021 Ficaria verna https://pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Ficaria+verna

Washington State Noxious Weed Board. Lesser Celandine. https://www.nwcb.wa.gov/weeds/lesser-celandine-1

Invasive Plant Corner: Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna)

At the end of winter we are looking for any hope of spring, any bright color in the landscape we can find. When you see a pretty yellow flower in late winter, check whether it is lesser celandine (Ficaria verna) before you get excited.

Deborah has been a botanist for the Kentucky Office of Nature Preserves and Florida state plant conservation programs.

The Habitat Management Symposium

The Habitat Management Symposium is a natural areas training event created for landowners and conservation professionals performing or planning habitat improvement practices. This symposium takes place on three Tuesdays: March 16, March 23 and March 30, from 10 am to 12 pm ET and 9 to 11 am CT. Tickets are free, and registration is required to receive the event link. 

Register Now

Topics and speakers include:

● Oak-Hickory Forest Management, Chris Will (President, Central Kentucky Forest Management)

● Amphibian Habitat Management, Stephen Richter (Eastern Kentucky University Professor and Director of Division of Natural Areas)

● Nuisance Deer Management, Matt Springer (Assistant Extension Professor of Wildlife Management, University of Kentucky Department of Forestry and Natural Resources)

● Stream Bank Stabilization, Oakes Routt (Senior Project Engineer, Stantec Consulting Services)

● Edge Habitat Management, Jason Nally (Wildlife Biologist/Environmental Champion, Maker’s Mark Distillery)

● Private Land Management: Challenges and Perspective of an Active Landowner, Melanie VanHouten (Founding Director, Josephine Sculpture Park)

● Small Game Habitat Management, Cody Rhoden (Small Game Biologist, Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources)

● Oak Decline, Ellen Crocker (Assistant Professor of Forest Health Extension, University of Kentucky Department of Forestry and Natural Resources)

● Scenarios for Efficient Invasive Plant Control, Jody Thompson (Executive Director, Woods & Waters Land Trust)

Countdown to Wildflower Week 2021!

Wildflower Week Starts April 10

The snow has melted, the days are getting warmer, we’re excited to celebrate the glory of spring and we hope you’ll join us for a virtual Wildflower Week from April 10-17. If you’re as ready as we are to get outside and explore natural areas for our favorite spring bloomers, head over to iNaturalist to join our Wildflower Week 2021 BotanyBlitz! A BotanyBlitz is citizen-science event that focuses on finding and identifying as many plant species as possible in a select area for a specific period of time. This particular Blitz is a state-wide event that will run for the duration of Wildflower Week, and it’s a great outdoor activity and easy to do while social-distancing! All you need to do to participate is log in or sign up for an iNaturalist account (a quick and easy process), navigate to the project page and click the “Join” button near the top right corner, then just upload plant photos you take during the week. If you aren’t sure how to identify everything you see, fear not! KNPS members will be watching the observations roll in, and are more than happy to help identify all the plants you aren’t familiar with. We encourage everyone to post their wildflower observations on iNaturalist for this botanyblitz, we’d love to see what’s blooming in your part of the state.

We also have a number of events already planned throughout the week:

  • On Saturday April 10, all are invited to attend the KNPS Spring Meeting & Wildflower Week Kick-Off Zoom meeting. Register here to attend both the Kick-off and Closing meetings!
  • Then on Monday April 12, we’re looking forward to watching a virtual hike with Park Naturalist Samantha Evans to Natural Bridge State Resort Park in the Red River Gorge area.
  • Tuesday April 13, Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves Botanist Tara Littlefield will take us on a virtual hike of Cumberland Plateau acid seeps of eastern Kentucky, a rare habitat that OKNP is helping to restore. Later that evening, you can test your botanical knowledge by attending a wildflower trivia contest hosted by The Arboretum, State Botanical Garden of Kentucky.
  • Make sure to sign up for Wednesday’s live Zoom class on Botanical Drawing, lead by Assistant Director of the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens Amy Tipton.
  • And on Sunday April 17, join us again on Zoom for our Closing Session, and to hear the BotanyBlitz Results!

Additional virtual as well as local events will be added between now and the Kick-Off date, so make sure to bookmark our official Wildflower Week 2021 info page to find out how to register for various events and check for updates.

Mark your calendars now, and we’ll see you on April 10!

Harbinger of spring (Erigenia bulbosa), doing what it does best.

KNPS Wildflower Week 2021 BotanyBlitz

Nick Koenig

Hello, native plant lovers! The Kentucky Native Plant Society is super excited to host a virtual Wildflower Week (April 10 to April 17) jam-packed with workshops, wildflowers, and iNaturalist. We are hoping to have a large group of botanists and plant enthusiasts from around the state join the KNPS Wildflower Week 2021 BotanyBlitz collection project on iNaturalist.

Here’s the webpage link!

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/knps-wildflower-week-2021-botanyblitz

A BotanyBlitz is an event where anyone who joins the iNaturalist project can use a camera to snap a picture of a plant, in a given area (this case Kentucky), and in a given timeframe (this case April 10-17). 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. 

Below are instructions to join the iNaturalist project and how to use iNaturalist. If you have any questions or would like to be more involved, please contact wildflowerweek@knps.org

Happy Botanizing!

App Instructions:

  1. Download the iNaturalist App (both iPhone and Android)
  2. Create/Sign In to your account.
  3. Click “More” (three dots)
  4. Click “Projects”
  5. Search “KNPS Wildflower Week 2021 BotanyBlitz”
  6. Join Project!

Computer Instructions

  1. Click the following link to the KNPS Wildflower Week 2021 BotanyBlitz iNaturalist Collection Project:
    1. https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/knps-wildflower-week-2021-botanyblitz
  2. Create/Sign In to your iNaturalist Account:
  1. Join the Project!

How to Use iNaturalist in the Field:

If you would like to learn more about how to use iNaturalist, check out the following video:

Biologists, land managers and researchers meet to discuss native Clover conservation in Kentucky

By: Tara Littlefield

Clovers (Trifolium sp.) are well recognized by the public primarily because of their role as a forage crop and lawn weed.  In Kentucky, we have 12 species of clover, but only 3 are native to our state, Kentucky Clover (Trifolium kentuckiense), running buffalo clover (Trifolium stoloniferum), and buffalo clover (Trifolium reflexum). All of our native clovers have declined greatly since European settlement and are state or federally listed as threatened or endangered. Historic accounts from pioneers and historic collections of native clovers indicate that our native clovers may have been more common in the woodlands of our state, particularly in the Bluegrass Region. Our native clovers have common names associated with buffalo since their associated habitat historically occurred mostly along buffalo/animal trails through the forest, which the Bluegrass Region is known for, large ungulates grazing on the grasses and forbs in our woodland systems.

In an effort to increase coordination and collaboration focused on priority native clover (Trifolium sp.) conservation projects in Kentucky, close to 30 botanists, ecologists, researchers, students, and land managers met in late February 2021 to discuss all things native clover (Trifolium sp.).  Species of focus included the globally rare and newly described Kentucky Clover (Trifolium kentuckiense), the federally endangered running buffalo clover (Trifolium stoloniferum), and the state threatened buffalo clover (Trifolium reflexum). 

The Kentucky Plant  Conservation Alliance coordinated the meeting and facilitators from the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves, Virginia Tech University, Eastern Kentucky University, Austin Peay University, University of Michigan, and Cincinnati Zoo presented information on the current status (population ranks and trends), current conservation measures (land protection and management efforts), current research (life history, management needs, and genetics), as well as seedbanking and propagation efforts  The goal of the group is to work more collaboratively together to prevent the extinction or extirpation of these native clovers.  If you missed the meeting, here is the agenda, and recorded version and meeting notes

If you are interested in joining our clover conservation group and helping with some of the existing working groups involving research, monitoring, management, propagation, seedbanking, and fundraising for priority clover projects, please contact Tara Littlefield, tara.littlefield@ky.gov.  We will continue to provide updates on existing Trifolium projects through the ladyslipper newsletter and at the Kentucky Botanical Symposium this fall.   We will also be organizing various volunteer days this summer to help with monitoring and managing running buffalo clover, so be on the lookout for future volunteer work day announcements. 

Kentucky Plant Conservation Alliance

“Collaborative conservation of rare plants and natural communities in Kentucky and the greater region”

What is the Kentucky Plant Conservation Alliance (KYPCA)?   

The Kentucky Plant Conservation Alliance (KYPCA) is a public private partnership of state and federal agencies, land managers, academic researchers, botanical gardens, conservation horticulturists, non-profits, 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 in order to facilitate collaboration amongst 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/work days, 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 like the Georgia Plant Conservation Alliance that help us learn how to most effectively build plant conservation 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.

KYPCA coordinators attended the SE partners in Plant Conservation meeting in Georgia in early 2020 (pre pandemic). Overview article of the meeting can be found here.

Why do we need the KYPCA?

“Plants are the foundation of most life on Earth”

Kentucky is a very diverse state floristically, from the Cumberland Mountains in the East to the swamps of the coastal plain region in the west.  The diversity is due to the topography and position on the landscape, the variety of geology and soils, the lack of recent glaciation and the history of natural disturbances such as fire and grazing.  However, the landscape of Kentucky has changed dramatically since European settlement.  Development and agriculture resulted in the dramatic loss of our old growth forests in the east, the grasslands of the interior plateau and the wetlands of the coastal plain.  Over 2000 native plants have been documented in Kentucky. Unfortunately approximately 20% of our plants are rare, threatened or endangered. Kentucky has 11 federally listed species and an additional 40 or so plants are globally rare and declining.  But there are still plant diversity hotspots scattered in remnant natural areas across the state.  65% of rare plants and 80% of rare natural communities in Kentucky are associated with grasslands, barrens or woodlands that need some level of disturbance (fire, browsing) or edaphic control (rock outcrops) to persist and all of our rare plants and communities need invasive species management.  Only a handful of professional staff are able to devote their time to monitoring and managing these rare plants due to limited resources.  In order to more effectively conserve these rare species and communities, we need to work collaboratively with partners and volunteers across the state to increase in situ and ex situ conservation of our rarest plants.

What kinds of projects does the KYPCA work on?

We work with our partners to prevent plant extinction and extirpation through in situ and ex situ conservation projects with a central goal of preventing local extinctions.  Projects activities can include surveys, monitoring, direct management (invasive species removal/prescribed fire), restoration, seed banking, propagation, introductions, research and outreach.   Projects are focused on rare plants that are in most need of immediate conservation action in order to prevent extinction from the state.  The rare plant priority list was created by Kentucky Rare Plant Committee, continually updated, and is also the proposed list to add to the Kentucky State Wildlife Action Plan in the next few years.    Plants are prioritized by rarity, lack of site protection or appropriate management, and other threats. Since rare plants are a part of larger natural communities, management and restoration of natural areas and partnerships with land managers is key to all projects.  Some recent projects include rare plant propagation, native clover conservation, white haired goldenrod community science monitoring and management, roadside rare plant surveys, wood lily and Pine Barrens restoration, rare plant listing and prioritization working groups, and working with partners to add plants to Kentucky’s state wildlife action plan.

How does the KYPCA connect?

The KYPCA connects to partners by coordinating rare plant and community focused meetings and symposiums; coordinating workshops and field work days; providing updates to the KNPS monthly Ladyslipper newsletter and the OKNP quarterly newsletter; through OKNP, KYPCA, and KNPS social media pages; and through our websites www.kypca.knps.org and www.naturepreserves.ky.gov.

How to get involved?

If you would like to get involved with these efforts, contact us at KYPCA@knps.org and formally join our alliance!   Please join the Kentucky Native Plant Society and sign up for the KNPS and OKNP newsletters to find out about volunteer opportunities and updates from recent projects.  The KNPS is offering small grants to directly help with the KYPCA efforts such as rare plant propagation, and inventory/monitoring of natural areas. Please contact us if you are interested in applying for a grant.   If you are an organization and are interested in formally joining, please send us your partnership logo and website info so we can add you to our partner page.  Projects that we need particular help with include volunteer coordination, conservation horticulture projects, as well as monitoring and management projects on public and private lands.