Kentucky Native Plant Society is looking for your help to assist with monitoring Cumberland Plateau pine barrens remnants along roadsides and powerlines in the Daniel Boone National Forests (DBNF). This is a rare plant community in eastern Kentucky. Pine Barrens are open woodlands made up of a mix of sandstone outcrops, grasslands, and open pine-oak woodlands with an open understory. Historically, pine barrens were maintained by periodic fire keeping the understory and canopy open. Due to logging and fire suppression, this community is greatly reduced and altered in Kentucky. The majority of the remnant pine barrens in Kentucky are restricted to powerline corridors and roadsides in the DBNF. Consequently, many of the plants once associated with this plant community are also rare. Wood lily (Lilium philadelphicum) for example, is restricted to this habitat in Kentucky and can be found primarily on roadsides of the DBNF. Population numbers of wood lily have plummeted in recent decades. Numerous other plants of concern also depend on this habitat including Ten-lobed False Foxglove (Agalinis decemloba), Yellow Wild Indigo (Baptisia tinctoria), Bearded Skeleton-grass (Gymnopogon ambiguous), Southern Crabapple (Malus angustifolia), Appalachian sandwort (Minuartia glabra), Racemed Milkwort (Polygala polygama), Hairy Snoutbean (Rhynchosia tomentosa), Chaffseed (Schwalbea americana), Eastern Silvery Aster (Symphyotrichum concolor), and Roundleaf Flameflower (Talinum teretifolium).
Knowing where plants occur is the first step towards protecting them. If you wish to help, please fill out this Signup Form and we will give you a section of DBNF roadside/powerlines to monitor over the coming growing season. We will utilize the smartphone app iNaturalist as a means of documenting the rare plants you find.
The app iNaturalist has grown from a graduate project at U.C. Berkeley to a global community of naturalists looking to connect people and nature through technology. The goal of the app is to allow citizens scientists, like yourself, to record biodiversity. Photographs taken with your smartphone are uploaded to the app, along with location data, where naturalists from across the world help identify the organism. By posting your photographs, you can contribute to a better understanding of the range and abundance of plants and animals. Kentucky Native Plant Society will track your photographs of plants along DBNF roadsides in an effort to protect these rare plants and remnant ecosystems. Hopefully, these efforts will go a long way towards protecting the Cumberland Plateau pine barrens remnants and the rare plants associated with them.