Botany Blitz 2025 & Kick Off Hikes – Call for Hike Leaders

Leading up to Wildflower Weekend 2025, at Carter Caves SRP, KNPS will be holding our 5th annual Botany Blitz 2025, which will run from Saturday, April 5th, through Sunday, April 13th. The spring Botany Blitz is a group effort to document as many plant species as possible within Kentucky during the week preceding Wildflower Weekend, and will again be hosted on the community science platform iNaturalist. Participants can use the iNaturalist mobile app in the field (or use the website if your preferred camera is not a smartphone!) to document their observations of Kentucky’s flora.

As in previous years, Botany Blitz 2025 will commence with a series of Kick Off Hikes held Saturday, April 5th and Sunday, April 6th, in parks and natural areas across the Commonwealth. These easygoing wildflower walks are led by local botanizers and naturalists who are familiar with the native flora that hikers will encounter. As the Kick Off Hikes are meant to start the Botany Blitz, 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 Botany Blitz 2025 project, although you do not need to be an iNaturalist user to enjoy these hikes.

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From the Lady Slipper Archives: Floracliff’s Old Trees: Acorns of Restoration for the Inner Bluegrass Region

The Lady Slipper newsletter of the Kentucky Native Plant Society has been published since the Society’s founding in 1986. We occasionally feature an article from a past issue. This article, from 2009, is a look at some of the oldest trees in Kentucky. This article first appeared in Winter 2009, Vol. 24, No. 2. If you would like to see other past issues, visit the Lady Slipper Archives, where all issues from Vol. 1, February 1986 to Vol. 39, 2024, can be found.

Floracliff’s Old Trees: Acorns of Restoration for the Inner Bluegrass Region

By Neil Pederson, Eastern Kentucky University

“Woodie C. Guthtree”, Kentucky’s oldest known
living tree at 398 years. Photo by Beverly James.

Old trees are windows into historical events. The science of tree-ring analysis takes advantage of a characteristic common to all trees: no matter how bad things get – an approaching fire, tornado, drought, etc. – trees must stay in place and absorb these abuses. Though each tree is an individual, environmental events like these impact all trees in a similar fashion: events that limit a tree’s ability to gain energy reduce the annual ring width. Scientists interpret patterns of ring widths within tree populations to reconstruct environmental history. To date, tree-ring scientists have successfully reconstructed drought history, Northern Hemisphere temperature, fire histories, insect outbreaks, etc. Tree-ring studies have also enriched human history. Scientists have dated logs from ancient structures that, in turn, triggered revisions of human history. Similarly, tree-ring evidence indicates that a severe drought likely contributed to the failure of The Lost Colony in Roanoke, NC and to the outbreak of a highly-contagious disease and subsequent crashes of the human population in ancient Mexico City. Just a few old trees in a small landscape can shed light into long-forgotten or unobserved events.

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What your gardening friends really want for Christmas

By Susan Harkins and Paula Mullins

It’s that time of year, and you’re in luck if a gardener is on your gift list. If you’re the gardener, send a link to this article to all of you secret Santas!

Passionate gardeners are probably the easiest people to please. If you’re close, you might already know that they’re searching for a specific orchid or drooling over a new set of shiny loppers. On the other hand, if you’re not sure, we can help.

Close to the holidays, you can purchase traditional holiday plants most anywhere. Amaryllis, paperwhites, and holiday cacti will show up everywhere and they’re affordable. They’re not natives, and not all gardeners are keen on house plants; if they don’t have any, skip this suggestion.

Tools are personal, but a gardener can almost always use a new set of good hand pruners, a hori knife, or a good pruning saw. A gardener can never have too many pairs of gardening shears, and they come in all sizes. If your gardening friend tends to lose tools (I know I do), a tool apron might be high on their list. It should have lots of pockets in different widths and lengths to corral they’re favorite hand tools.

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Calling all Artists & Graphic Designers! Enter the Wildflower Weekend 2025 Logo Design Contest

[UPDATE: Submissions are no longer being accepted]

If you are an artist or graphic designer, we would love for you to consider entering the Wildflower Weekend 2025 Logo Design Contest. This is an open design contest to come up with a logo for Wildflower Weekend 2025 (April 11-13 at Carter Caves SRP). The logo will be used on t-shirts, hoodies, and coffee cups, as well as on all publicity about the event. The submitted designs will be presented to the KNPS membership for voting and the winner will be awarded $200 and be recognized on the KNPS website.

In June of 2022, a KNPS member posted the image on the right on the KNPS Facebook group page of a 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. The KNPS Board decided to bring back this great tradition for Wildflower Weekend 2023.

WW2023 logo

The Board asked KNPS vice-president Kendall MacDonald to design a logo for the 2023 Wildflower Weekend. The beautiful image she created featured the yellow trout lily (Erythronium americanum) with Cumberland Falls as the background. The image was used in all publicity for the event and was also featured on an adult t-shirt, a coffee mug, a kid’s t-shirt, and an adult hoodie that were available for sale in our KNPS Gear Shop.

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From the Lady Slipper Archive: The Genus Viola (Violaceae) The Violets

The Lady Slipper newsletter of the Kentucky Native Plant Society has been published since the Society’s founding in 1986. We occasionally feature an article from a past issue. Wildflower Weekend 2025 will be at Carter Caves State Resort Park. Carter county is a hot spot of Violet (Viola) diversity in Kentucky, with 13 species of Viola found in the county. This article, from November 1992, is an in-depth look at the Violas of Kentucky. This article first appeared in Nov 1992, Vol. 7, No. 4. If you would like to see other past issues, visit the Lady Slipper Archives, where all issues from Vol. 1, No. 1, February 1986 to Vol. 39, 2024, can be found.

The Genus Viola (Violaceae) The Violets

by Landon McKinney, KSNPC

There are approximately 40 to 50 species of wild violets occurring throughout North America. Of these, twenty-two species and several varieties occur in Kentucky. Virtually every wildflower enthusiast knows a violet when he or she sees one. Beyond that, distinctions between the various species become quite confusing on occasion, even for the seasoned professional.

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KNPS 2024 Fall Meeting at Bernheim Arboretum & Pine Creek Barrens

On Saturday, October 19, 2024, over 30 KNPS members and friends came together for a day of botanical education and exploration at the Bernheim Forest and Arboretum & Pine Creek Barrens Nature Preserve.

The day began in the the Sassafras Room, located in the Bernheim Arboretum Visitor Center, with updates from KNPS leadership on the Society’s activities in 2024 and plans for 2025. Following the updates the group enjoyed two talks. The first talk was Boo! Botany that goes Bump in the Night by KNPS Vice-president and Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves Botanist, Kendall McDonald. In a nod to the season, Kendall gave a fun and interesting presentation on poisonous, carnivorous, and parasitic plants found in Kentucky. Following Kendall, Tyson Gregory, KNPS member and Director of Programs for Trees Lexington, presented Ethical Seed Collection. His presentation was chock full of tips and information on collecting native plant seeds ethically and responsibly. You can download both of these presentations by clicking on the images below.

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From the Lady Slipper Archives: The Slender Lip Fern in Kentucky

The Lady Slipper newsletter of the Kentucky Native Plant Society has been published since the Society’s founding in 1986. We occasionally feature an article from a past issue. This year’s Fall Meeting will include a hike at Pine Creek Barrens Nature Preserve in Bullitt county. This article, from the fall of 2014, is about a rare species of fern, the slender lip fern, Myriopteris gracilis, found only in Kentucky in Bullitt county. The location of this fern is along Cedar Creek, in similar habitat to Pine Creek Barrens, and is about a mile away as the crow flies. This article first appeared in the fall of 2014, Vol. 29, No. 3. If you would like to see other past issues, visit the Lady Slipper Archives, where all issues from Vol. 1, No. 1, February 1986 to Vol. 39, 2024, can be found.

The Slender Lip Fern in Kentucky

by James Beck

A single low dolomite ledge near Cedar Creek in Bullitt County harbors one of the most unique plant populations in Kentucky. At a distance this might appear to be a population of the hairy lip fern, Myriopteris lanosa (Michx.) Grusz & Windham, a species known from >20 Kentucky counties. Most will probably know M. lanosa as Cheilanthes lanosa (Michx.) D.C. Eaton, a species recently transferred (along with most North and Central American species of Cheilanthes) to Myriopteris (Grusz and Windham 2013). However, closer inspection will reveal that these Bullitt Co. ferns have smaller, nearly beadlike ultimate segments that are densely hairy underneath, keying clearly to the slender lip fern, Myriopteris gracilis Fée (Cheilanthes feeii T. Moore), in either Jones (2005) or Cranfill (1980).

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