Southeast Medicinal Plants is a guide for foraging wild medicinal plants in the United States southeast. I was hoping for an ethical review of the subject, and I wasn’t disappointed. My first stop was ginseng and here’s the first sentence: “This book is sharing how to identify ginseng (aka American ginseng) so you can observe it, not to harvest it.”
American ginseng is unethically and illegally wild-harvested throughout the Appalachians, which is quickly decimating wild populations. I appreciate the author’s honesty and his encouragement to grow your own or purchase only from reputable sources who don’t harvest from the wild.
The book’s first section is a guide on how to identify, harvest and use medicinal plants. The greater part of the book is an alphabetical guide to medicinal plants. Each plant includes a clear picture, information on how to identify the plant in the wild, where and how to wildcraft the plant and finally, how to prepare it for medicinal use. Harvesting information specifies methods for doing the least damage to the plant.
My favorite part of each section is “Future harvests.” The author identifies plants that have unusual growing habits or is of ecological concern, so you know whether harvesting what you’ve found is safe and ethical.
Given the nature of this book, it includes some non-native and often invasive plants. That isn’t a criticism; I’m all for harvesting invasives. I hope in a future edition, the author decides to use the term “invasive” and encourage foragers not to grow them on their property.
Coreypine Shane is founder of the Blue Ridge School of Herbal Medicine in Asheville, North Carolina. He has advised clients, taught classes, and presenter lectures for more than 25 years. He hosts a web sit at blueridgeschool.org.
Date of trip: 7/9/2022 Start time: 10AM Location: Buena Vista Glade, Taylor, Indiana Difficulty of hike: Moderate to Difficult. The glade is very rugged. We’ll hike about a mile and it will take probably two hours knowing plant nerds. And there are always ticks.
Whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata)
Join Kentucky Native Plant Society member Alan Abbott on a field trip to Buena Vista Glade in Taylor, Indiana, about 50 minutes west from downtown Louisville. Plants that will likely be in flower include green milkweed (Asclepias verdiflora), whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata), and glade St. John’s-wort (Hypernicum dolabriforme). With a little luck we might also see Ozark bunchflower (Melanthium woodii) in bloom.
Ozark bunchflower (Melanthium woodii)
One of the defining characteristics of the Bluegrass and Pennyroyal Plateau regions is the presence of small, rocky glades. Broadly speaking, a glade is any clearing in a forest. But in our part of the country, it tends to refer to areas with a shallow soil and a limestone bedrock, usually on south- or west-facing slopes. Without trees shading everything out, a rich layer of grasses and forbs emerges. As islands of grassland within larger forested areas, they tend to have high rates of endemism, or plants found only within one, relatively small area. Some plants can be found only in a few counties (like Kentucky gladecress, Leavenworthia exigua var. laciniata) or a narrow region, like the Interior Low Plateau, which runs from northern Alabama, through central Tennessee and Kentucky and into south-central Indiana.
Their isolation means that glades separated by only a few miles can have surprisingly different plant communities. In Harrison County, Indiana, which has similar shallow soils and limestone bedrock as Kentucky’s Bluegrass Region, one glade may have hundreds of Echinacea and a similar one walking distance away won’t have any.
Sign Up for the Field Trip
Because of the fragile nature of glade plant communities, we are limiting sign-ups to 10 people.
by Heidi Braunreiter, KNPS Vice President & Jeff Nelson, KNPS President
From April 8th through the 10th, over 100 native plant enthusiasts came together to enjoy KNPS’ first, in-person, Wildflower Weekend since 2019. Although temperatures were cool and skies were damp at Natural Bridge SRP, spirits were high as folks dressed for the weather and enjoyed 14 different native plant walks led by an incredible group of expert botanists. Saturday night, a large group of KNPS members and friends met in the Woodland Center for presentations by Ted Brancheau, Nick Koenig, and the keynote speaker, Mike Homoya.
Wildflower Walks
Beginning at noon on Friday and ending Sunday morning, fourteen wildflower walks, led by some of the best botanists in the country, explored the amazing diversity of the plant communities in Natural Bridge SRP and the Red River Gorge. Here’s some shots from the walks.
Carolina Vetch (Vicia carolina)
Red trillium (Trillium erectum)
Search for sweet pinesap.
Sweet pinesap (Monotropsis odorata)
Striped wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata)
Virginia pennywort (Obolaria virginica)
Bishop’s cap (Mitella diphylla)
Members & Friends Friday Evening Campfire
Woodland phlox (Phlox divaricata)
Trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens)
Downy serviceberry(Amelanchier arborea)
Lichen walk
Cranefly orchid (Tipularia discolor)
Long-spurred violet (Viola rostrata)
Rock Bridge Trail
Discussions about next year’s Wildflower Weekend 2023 are already happening. Dates and the location are not set yet, but be thinking about the first half of April as the general time-frame. If you have any thoughts about how the event could be made better, we would love to hear from you. If you would like to lead or co-lead a walk next year, let us know. KYPlants@knps.org.
Tara Littlefield, OKNP Botanist, KNPS board member
The sweet, sweet pinesap (Monotropsis odorata), a globally rare little herbaceous plant related to the heath family (now placed in the family Monotropaceae, formerly in the Ericaceae), gets its name from the sweet, clove like scent it emits in the early spring. It is one of those plants that you can find just by using your nose. In fact, you would have better luck finding this plant by its smell rather than sight as it’s a master of disguise, camouflaging its tiny self (just a couple inches tall) among the oak and pine leaf litter in the acidic uplands of the Appalachians.
Sweet pinesap. @LittlefieldSweet pinesap. @LittlefieldCan you see the sweet pinesap? @LittlefieldSweet Pinesap global range. This globally rare plant occurs more often in North Carolina and Virginia, but is tracked as rare throughout its range. While state endangered in KY, the Red River Gorge is a disjunct hotspot for sweet pinesap. @BONAP range map.Its leaves are brown and scale like, covering its pale purple flower stalk and yellowish flower, completely disguising the patches of sweet pinesap as oak leaf litter @Littlefield
In addition to its diminutive size, camouflaged adaptations, and strong sweet odor, it is even more of an oddity in the plant world. This little hidden plant gets its energy NOT from the sun, a characteristic plant trait, but from partnering up with mycorrhizal fungi in the soil! No need to photosynthesize and be green if you have friendly fungus among us to help you out. There are not that many plants that have chosen this path of forgoing the sun and going all in with fungal co evolution. These same mycorrhizal fungi are also attached to the roots of the oaks and pines of the acidic Appalachian ridgetop forests and serve an important role of creating an underground network of plants and fungi communicating and sharing nutrients for survival. They call this type of plant a mycoheterotroph-a plant that gets its energy from mycorrhizal fungi.
Pollen from the sweet pinesap falls to the ground. @Littlefield.
One of my favorite springtime rituals in Kentucky is to visit the Red River Gorge at the end of March to early April and use my nose to locate patches of sweet pinesap while hiking along the trails of the upland ridges. During the KNPS wildflower weekend this year, a group of excited plant enthusiasts did just that. Walking the pine oak ridge tops, our group took in the scenes of chestnut oaks, scraggly pitch and Virginia pines, and among the little violets, bluets and tufts of pin cushion and broom moss, a faint sweet smell became stronger, until it was so strong our group stopped and knew we were upon a sweet pinesap population. Looking around the leaf litter, we finally located the sweet pine sap, and we all dropped to the ground to view this little beauty in all is glory, enamored by its wonderful smell and amazing adaptations for survival.
KNPS hike to search for the elusive sweet pinesap. Estella and Henry Berry find the sweet pinesap! @LittlefieldYou have to get down close to view the sweet pinesap. @LittlefieldAlan Abbott gets down close to photograph the elusive beauty. @LittlefieldDr. Koslow, KNPS board member, looks closely at a patch of sweet pinesap. @LittlefieldKNPS hike to search for the elusive sweet pinesap, April 9th, 2022.
Last year one of the components of our “Virtual” Wildflower Week 2021 was KNPS’s first BotanyBlitz event, hosted on the iNaturalist platform. A BotanyBlitz is a plant-focused BioBlitz, which is an event where participants try to document as many species as possible within a certain geographical location during a set period of time. We felt the event was such a success that even though we returned to in-person events for Wildflower Weekend 2022, we decided to keep the weeklong BotanyBlitz as part of the annual event.
BotanyBlitz Winners
We have awarded a small prize (KNPS coffee mug!) to the first place participants in three categories: Most Species Observed, Most Observations, and Most Identifications. So without further ado, here are the winners of the 2022 BotanyBlitz!
For the categories of both Most Species Observed and Most Observations, Nick Koenig (@nick_koenig1) swept the first-place spot with 224 species observed and a total of 294 observations made over the course of the week. Congrats to Nick for his awesome botanizing! In the category of Most Identifications, Pennsylvania resident Burlton Griffith (@burls) came in first place with an incredible 1,632 observations made for Kentucky botanizers. We’re grateful for all the identification help we can get during iNaturalist events, no matter where it comes from, and @burls’s contribution to the ID effort this year was invaluable! To see the rest of the leaderboard in all three categories, check out the project overview page on iNaturalist.
BotanyBlitz 2022 and 2021 Compared
This year, the BotanyBlitz was scheduled a week earlier than it was last year, and the cooler-than-average weather from March to early April resulted in a slower emergence of spring flora. The effects of this are definitely reflected when you compare the most observed species in 2021 and 2022, as earlier-blooming species were observed much more frequently this year. For example, the most observed species for this year’s BotanyBlitz was Cutleaf toothwort (Cardamine concatenata) with 105 observations, and the vast majority of these observations showed plants in full bloom. Contrast this with last year’s blitz, where Cutleaf Toothwort was in 29th place, and about a third of it was already past flowering and starting to develop fruits. Last year, the most observed species was Dwarf Larkspur (Delphinium tricorne) with 72 observations, and with nearly all observed plants in full bloom. This year Dwarf Larkspur was in 10th place, and about half of the plants seen were only in bud.
Despite the slower and cooler spring, this year’s BotanyBlitz showed a lot of growth compared to last year. We actually observed more species this year (539 species compared to 462 in 2021), increased our total observations by almost 1,500 (4,614 vs. 3,169) and had more participants (121 observers compared to 109). Just a note — the data on iNaturalist are constantly changing, as identifications can be added or changed over time, so all numbers reported here are just a snapshot.
Rare Species Observations
Participants also observed a number of rare spring flora this year, click the links to check out the observations on iNaturalist!
Running Buffalo Clover (Trifolium stoloniferum, Threatened): On the Kick-off day of the BotanyBlitz, Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves botanists Heidi Braunreiter and Rachel Cook lead an iNaturalist tutorial hike in Lexington, where participants were able to observe a well-managed population of this former federally-endangered species.
False Mermaidweed (Floerkea proserpinacoides, Special Concern): Several observations of this small annual species showed healthy and abundant populations in wooded parks of Kenton County.
Sweet Pinesap (Monotropsis odorata, Threatened): Several populations of this unique and highly fragrant species were seen (and smelled!) by hikers during Wildflower Weekend at Natural Bridge State Park.
Smallflower Baby Blue Eyes (Nemophila aphylla, Threatened): A new population of this species was discovered in Trigg County just prior to the Kickoff Day, and was revisited during the BotanyBlitz.
Kentucky Gladecress (Leavenworthia exigua var. laciniata, Endangered): This tiny and very rare glade-dweller was observed several times in flower during the BotanyBlitz.
Glade Violet (Viola egglestonii, Special Concern): Another glade species, this was observed by OKNP botanists while surveying for Kentucky Gladecress.
Wildflower Photos
Finally, the most important part of the BotanyBlitz is the gorgeous photos of Kentucky’s spring wildflowers. Here are a few that caught our eye:
Thanks to all of the BotanyBlitz participants for making this year’s project so successful, we hope to see you all again in 2023. In the meantime, if you enjoyed the BotanyBlitz and are looking for more iNaturalist projects to participate in, consider joining the 2022 Kentucky Botanists Big Year project: this is an event similar to the BotanyBlitz, but is a yearlong event rather than just one week, and it’s a great way to become more familiar with Kentucky’s flora across the seasons!
Here’s Wildflower Weekend Hike Leader Estella Berry photographed in a patch of Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) by her mom and co-leader @tararoselittlefield.
Date of trip: 06/11/2022 Time: 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM (approx.) Central Time Location: Ballard County Difficulty of hike: Easy – We will caravan/carpool on the gravel roads in the wildlife management area, stopping to view a variety of native plants and habitats. At a couple of the stops, we will walk distances of under a 1/2 mile.
Swamp Candles (Lysimachia terrestris)
Join KNPS President, Jeff Nelson and Ballard WMA employee, Gerald Burnett, as as we explore the native plant ecosystems in the wetlands and river bottoms of the Ballard WMA in Ballard Co.
Ballard Wildlife Management Area is 8,000 acres located in the Ohio River bottomlands ecoregion in far western Kentucky. The WMA is mostly wetland with 39% of the acreage in wetland, 28% forest, 27% open land, and 6% open water. Much of the wetland is comprised of rare, cypress-tupelo swamps and sloughs which many Kentuckians have not had the opportunity to experience. The Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves lists cypress-tupelo swamp as a state endangered ecosystem.
We will caravan (carpooling as much as possible) around the WMA, stopping to examine the botany of Ballard’s diverse ecosystems. We should see several uncommon, wetland plant species. In particular we should see the rare swamp candles (Lysimachia terrestris), a more northerly species that in Kentucky is only found in two far western counties. Although we will not be hiking any distance, we will be taking walks of less than 1/2 mile at a couple of stops, all on the road or trails. We will walk into areas off the road to get a better view many of the plants. There is likely to be some muddy spots where we will be walking, so be prepared.
Registration is Required
Please fill out the form below to register for this field trip. This trip will be limited to 20 people.
KNPS Field Trip to the Land Between the Lakes on July 6, 2019. Devin Rogers is the hike Leader.
Our 2022 schedule of KNPS Field Trips is coming together! Already scheduled, we will have field trips in June to Ballard WMA and in July we will visit a glade community across the Ohio River, in Indiana. Other field trips across the Commonwealth are in the planning stages and will be announced here in the Lady Slipper when they are scheduled.
Several years ago, KNPS adopted the policy of requiring preregistration for field trips and KNPS members are given the first opportunity to register for these trips. Once KNPS members have had a chance to register, signup forms will be available on the web site approximately 30 days before the field trip.
Swamp candles (Lysimacha terrestris)
Our first field trip this year will be on June 11 to the Ballard Wildlife Management Area, in Ballard Co. Ballard Wildlife Management Area is 8,000 acres located in the Ohio River bottomlands ecoregion in far western Kentucky. Much of the wetlands are comprised of rare, cypress-tupelo swamps and sloughs which many Kentuckians have never had the opportunity to experience. The Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves lists cypress-tupelo swamp as a state endangered ecosystem. We should see several uncommon, wetland plant species. In particular we hope to see the rare swamp candles (Lysimachia terrestris) in bloom, a more northerly species, that in Kentucky is only found in two far western counties.
On July 9, KNPS member Alan Abbott will lead a field trip to Buena Vista Glade in Taylor, Indiana, about 50 minutes west from downtown Louisville. Plants that will likely be in flower include green milkweed (Asclepias verdiflora), whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata), and glade St. John’s-wort (Hypernicum dolabriforme). With a little luck we might also see American columbo (Melanthium woodii) in bloom. Read more about glades in Alan’s article, What is A Glade? Registration for this field trip will open up in early June. Watch the Lady Slipper for the announcement (or if you are a KNPS member you will receive an email when registration is open).
If you have any questions about these trips or if there is a natural area in KY that you think would make for a good field trip, send us an email at KYPlants@knps.org. We are also always looking for folks to lead field trips. If there is a natural area with some nice native plant species that you would like to share with other KNPS members, send us an email. We will take care of organizing and publicizing the trip, you just have to share you love of native plants with the participants.
