Jeff Nelson, KNPS President 2022-2024
I write this message just a week after historic and unprecedented floods devastated Eastern Kentucky. I know I speak for all of our members when I say that our hearts are broken for the lives that were lost and the homes, businesses, and entire communities that were utterly destroyed. Unsurprisingly, Kentuckians across the Commonwealth have stepped up by volunteering and providing needed resources to their fellow Kentuckians. If you are reading this message and are looking for a way to help, a donation to the Team Eastern Kentucky Flood Relief Fund is one way to make a difference. Thank you.
Be sure to mark your calendars for the KNPS Fall Meeting, Saturday, October 15, at Blue Licks Battlefield State Resort Park. This will be a great opportunity to get together with other KNPS members and friends and to find out what the Society is planning for the end of this year and in 2023. We will also be taking easy walks through the Blue Licks State Nature Preserve to see the globally rare and endangered Short’s goldenrod (Solidago shortii). We are still working out details for the meeting but you can read about what we currently have planned here: KNPS 2022 Fall Meeting – Save The Date, Oct. 15. Learn more about Short’s goldenrod from this article from the Lady Slipper Archives, “A Short Take on Short’s Goldenrod.”
This summer the Society built on the success of Wildflower Weekend by getting back to scheduled, in-person field trips. In June we had our first field trip of the year at the Ohio floodplains of the Ballard Wildlife Management Area in Ballard Co. The participants saw many wetland obligate species such as broadleaf arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia), green arrow arum (Peltandra virginica), as well as the lovely swamp candles (Lysimachia terrestris), a species that is rare in KY and only known from two far western counties.
In July, Alan Abbott took a group to Buena Vista Glade in Taylor, Indiana, about 50 minutes west from downtown Louisville. This glade community has similar shallow soils and limestone bedrock as glades in Kentucky’s Bluegrass Region, as well as similar plant communities. The group saw several interesting glade species, including straggling St. John’s-Wort (Hypericum dolabriforme), green comet milkweed (Asclepias verdiflora), and whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata).
At the end of July, the Society was finally able to present a workshop that had originally been scheduled for March, 2020, and which had to be cancelled due to the pandemic. The workshop, “Plant Family Identification Motifs: patterns for simplifying the complexity“, was given by Dr. J. Richard Abbott, Assistant Professor of Biology, and current Curator of the University of Arkansas Monticello Herbarium. With the cooperation and assistance of the good folks at Bernheim Arboretum, a group of around 20 native plant enthusiasts spent a day in the facilities and plantings at Bernheim, learning how to use certain motifs to ID plants to their plant families. The group learned a lot and as one participant, Carol, wrote, “Just wanted to drop a line that this class was fantastic! I’d attend a Part 2 session if there was one scheduled!”
Watch for more field trips and workshops in the months to come and remember that KNPS members get first shot at signing up for any of these events before they are opened to the general public.
Everything that KNPS does happens because of the support and help of our members and friends. On behalf of the Society, I want to thank everyone reading this message for caring about the native plants of our beautiful Commonwealth and for the support you give to the Kentucky Native Plant Society, thank you.
If you would like to get more involved with the activities of the Society or if you have any questions about KNPS or the native plants of Kentucky, please send us an email at KYPlants@knps.org
—- Jeff Nelson