Hello all native plant and nature lovers!

As we enter 2026, KNPS has transitioned into a new term with new officers. As your new KNPS President, I would like to introduce myself to all of you!

My name is Kendall McDonald, and I am a lifelong Kentuckian from the rural central bluegrass. My love for nature started early, as I explored the tributaries of Elkhorn Creek and the Kentucky River with my family. As I grew older, my love for nature was mostly expressed through painting, photography and continuing to play in the creek. I attended Morehead State University, where I focused on botany and lichens in my coursework and research. As a research student I conducted a lichen inventory of the Eagle Lake watershed.

After graduating in 2017, I started as a Botany Tech at the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves. As of the beginning of 2026, I have been at OKNP for 8.5 years and now act as botanist, lichenologist and outreach coordinator. My work mainly focuses on the Kentucky Forest Biodiversity Assessment Program, the Kentucky Lichen Program, endangered species monitoring, digital design, and outreach. My greatest successes at this job have been creating the state’s first lichen list, assigning conservation ranks to all Kentucky lichen species, leading the Kentucky Forest Biodiversity Assessment Program for 7 years and creating many outreach materials, including the new Kentucky Heritage Lands Conservation Fund’s new nature license plates.

In my personal time I enjoy hiking, spending time with friends and family, creating art, watching good cinema, playing cozy video games, thrifting, and watching cute animal videos. I have a 9 year old tortoise shell cat named Luna Belle (pictured on the right) who I adore. If you attend any KNPS virtual meetings, you will meet her, as she believes herself the star of every video call I’ve ever had.

I have been attending KNPS events since 2018, and became officially involved in 2019. I have served as Vice President for 2 years. My experience at KNPS has been rewarding, challenging and exciting and I cannot wait to serve the society in a different capacity. I am looking forward to meeting and working with each of you during my term.

The best way to get to know me is to spend time with me outdoors. Here are my favorite botanical and natural world memories from 2025. Here’s to 2026 and the love of native plants!

Limestone Slope Glades

Cumberland Acid Seeps

This summer, I had the honor of working in the Cumberland Acid Seeps to plant White Fringeless Orchid (Platanthera integrilabia, WFO) and document the biodiversity of lichens on the trees. The WFO project in Kentucky is coordinated by OKNP Biological Assessment & Plant Conservation branch manager and University of Kentucky PhD student Tara Littlefield. Tara showed me my first WFO in 2017 (which was my first federally listed species) and seeing her hard work and multi-agency collaboration result in a large planting of this federally threatened orchid 8 years later was incredibly gratifying. Holding the delicate roots of the seedlings and placing them into the watery muck of the seep felt like tucking a child into a warm and cozy bed. As the natural world changes unnaturally fast all around us, planting projects like this are essential to rare plant conservation. Addition to the vascular flora, these seeps are lichen biodiversity hotspots. Rare lichens observed this year included rimmed shingles lichen (Fuscopannaria leucosticta), frazzled dot lichen (Gomphillus americanus), lungwort (Lobaria pulmonaria), smooth lungwort (Ricasolia quercizans), tree flute (Menegazzia subsimilis), fingered moon lichen (Sticta beauvoisii), elf-ear lichen (Normandina pulchella), and green specklebelly lichen (Crocodia aurata).

Kentucky Lady Slipper

In the early summer, I got to survey for Kentucky Lady Slipper (Cypripedium kentuckiense) with Dr. Allen Risk of Morehead State University. He was one of the botanists on the original projects that discovered these populations in the early 1990s. It was very cool to come back with him over 30 years later and hear his firsthand accounts on the ways the landscape has changed. I always learn new and interesting things from Allen on ecology, geology, lichens, bryophytes and vascular plants. The day was filled with many discussions of lichen/bryophyte communities and epiphytes of Kentucky. The Kentucky Lady Slipper was ultimately the star of the day, blessing us with over 50 of its beautiful cream and maroon flowers and hundreds of vegetative leaves.

A Late Summer Storm in the Mature Forests of the Daniel Boone National Forest

After a dry spell, I visited some mature Appalachian Mesophytic Forests after (and during) much needed rain. It was incredibly peaceful to listen to the sound of the water dripping onto the rhododendron (Rhododendron maximum) leaves and the babble of the cold creek as I watched a pair of hooded warblers (Setophaga citrina) dance around in rhododendron branches above me. The rain must have been a huge relief to the amphibians of the forest because I saw 17 Eastern newts (Notophthalmus viridescens) in the red eft stage as I hiked. As is typical in the summer, clear skies suddenly turned dark as a surprise summer storm made its way through the Rockcastle River corridor. I sheltered in sandstone overhangs during the summer rain and got to experience the misty forest as the sun returned.

Pine Mountain Scenic Trail: Summer and Autumn

I was fortunate enough to visit the Pine Mountain area for 3 weeks this year. A week of forest surveys had me stretching the mountain, from Pike county to the southern edge of Harlan county. I drove along the Little Shepards Trail in between sites, documenting forests, lichens and pollinators. The large chestnut oaks (Quercus montana) of Pine Mountain are home to several rare lichens, as the deep furrows in the bark provide a micro habitat of protection and moisture for sensitive lichens. The summer visit brought observations of eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus), black swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes), Joe-pye weed (Eutrochium fistulosum), Appalachian bellflower (Campanula divaricata), elf-ear lichen (Normandina pulchella), and the common raven (Corvus corax).

I returned to the Pine Mountain Scenic Trail in the fall, hiking with friends under the vivid colors of the changing leaves and the gray rainy mountain skies. Though the wet, windy, cold and foggy conditions of the ridge top can be an uncomfortable hike (without the proper gear), the constant moisture and high air quality make the ridge of Pine Mountain a hotspot for lichens. The lichen flora was so incredible that my hiking companion and I documented our record low hiking speed of <0.5 miles per hour. These adventures contained sightings of lungwort (Lobaria pulmonaria), pelt lichens (Peltigera sp.), smooth lungwort (Ricasolia quercizans), trashy tube lichen (Hypogymnia tuberosa), fingered moon lichen (Sticta beauvoisii), upside seastorm lichen (Cetrelia olivetorum). My favorite observations were old man’s beard Lichens (Usnea sp.) as long as a botanist’s arm and two hawks locking talons in an intense spiraling and screaming dive.

Alan Weakley and the Southeastern Flora Team are thrilled to announce the release of FloraQuest: Northern Tier, a new plant identification and discovery app covering more than 5,800 wildflowers, trees, shrubs, grasses, and other vascular plants occurring in the northern part of The Flora of the Southeastern United States (FSUS). 

With easy-to-use graphic keys, advanced dichotomous keys, habitat descriptions, range maps, and 20,000 diagnostic photographs, FloraQuest: Northern Tier is the perfect companion for your botanical explorations. FloraQuest: Northern Tier doesn’t need an internet connection to run, so you can take it with you wherever you go in the field.

You can use FloraQuest to learn about and identify all plants occurring within the 12-state “northern tier” portion of the FSUS. The app allows you to filter the state and physiographic region in which you are botanizing, seeing only relevant results close to you. Do you struggle to remember complicated botanical terms? We’ve got you covered: click on a word you don’t know, and the definition will pop up in the app without you having to leave the page! 

This app covers Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Washington (D.C.), Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and parts of New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. In the coming years, our Flora team will be releasing additional apps for the remaining regions of the Southeastern Flora. Next up is North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. 

FloraQuest: Northern Tier is available for both iOS and Android devices for $19.99.  

We remain committed to traditional floras and making flora data accessible: you can access the FSUS web app or download the latest PDF of the Flora of the Southeastern United States for free (donations optional) at ncbg.unc.edu/research/unc-herbarium/floras/.