Wildflower Week 2025 Archives - Kentucky Native Plant Society

Save the Date! KNPS Wildflower Weekend 2025 – April 11-13, 2025

We have exciting news for all of our members and friends! KNPS is happy to announce this year’s Wildflower Weekend has been scheduled for April 11th -13th, 2025, at Carter Caves State Resort Park in Carter County! Beginning in 2023, the KNPS Board decided that we would alternate Wildflower Weekend between the longtime host site, Natural Bridge SRP, in even numbered years, and then a different state park in odd numbered years. This year, our annual Wildflower Weekend will be held at Carter Caves SRP.

The event will include guided hikes through beautiful natural areas throughout the weekend, a Friday Evening Friends & Members Social, and Saturday evening presentations.

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Calling all Kentucky research students! KNPS will have a Student Poster Session at Wildflower Weekend 2025!

KNPS is happy to announce that we will be hosting our first student poster session at Wildflower Weekend 2025! Wildflower Weekend is a 35+ year tradition that focuses on providing high quality botanical and biodiversity educational and fellowship experiences to professionals, naturalists, and nature lovers of all ages. Wildflower Weekend will be held at Carter Caves State Resort Park in Grayson, KY from April 11^th-12^th, 2025.

We are looking for undergraduate, graduate and PhD students at Kentucky colleges and universities doing research in botany, biology, and other related fields in the spring of 2025!

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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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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.

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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