Kentucky Native Plant Society, Author at Kentucky Native Plant Society

From The Lady Slipper Archives: New England Aster: 2010 Wildflower of the Year

The Lady Slipper newsletter of the Kentucky Native Plant Society has been published since the Society’s founding in 1986. With this article, we will begin to occasionally feature an article from a past issue. This one, about one of Kentucky’s loveliest natives, the New England Aster, first appeared in the summer of 2010, Vol. 25, No. 2. 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. 34, No. 1, Winter/Spring 2019 (after which we moved to this blog format) can be found.

The author, Mary Carol Cooper, left a huge legacy to the native plant community when she passed in 2016. In almost every native plant gathering, her name is mentioned and a moment is given over to appreciate her knowledge, which she freely shared. Her passion led many of us to our love of natives; she was a mentor and friend to many of us.

New England Aster: 2010 Wildflower of the Year

By Mary Carol Cooper, Salato Center Native Plant Program Coordinator

The Wildflower of the Year is chosen based on the number of nominations it receives and this year more wildflower enthusiasts statewide voted than ever before! They chose New England Aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) as the Salato Native Plant Program Wildflower of the Year for 2010. Aster comes from the Greek word for “star.” It describes the star-like form of the flower. Other familiar words using “aster” are astronomy, astrology and astronaut. According to Greek legend, the aster was created out of stardust when Virgo (the maiden Astraea, goddess of innocence and purity) looking down from heaven, wept. Asters were scared to all the gods and goddesses and beautiful wreaths made from the blossoms were placed on temple altars on very important festive occasions. Known in France as “eye of Christ” and in Germany as starworts, asters were often burned to keep away evil spirits. A hodgepodge of asters was thought to cure the bite of a mad dog. Shakers used the plant to clear their complexions and ancient Greeks used it as an antidote for snakebites and to drive away snakes. Virgil believed that boiling aster leaves in wine and placing them close to a hive of bees would improve the honey. Native Americans found many uses for asters, from treating skin rashes and earaches to stomach pains and intestinal fevers. Nerve medicines and cures for insanity were made from some asters and others were eaten as food. Some were smoked in pipes as a charm to attract game, especially deer. Today there are no medical uses for asters.

**New England Aster, photo by Thomas Barnes**

The genus Aster has recently undergone a name change due to close study using DNA testing and other techniques. There are about 150 flowering plants in North America traditionally placed in the aster genus. About 50 of them are considered common and widespread. Now there is only one species left with the name Aster. The other species have been given several tongue-twisting generic names. For the botanist, renaming of the asters brought accuracy and order. For the layperson, it removed some wonderfully colorful names and replaced them with unspellable and unpronounceable names! Aster novae-angliae was translated as “star of New England” and now as Symphyotrichum novae-angliae, it is literally “fused hairs of New England.” The word Symphyotrichum was created in 1832 to describe the hairs on the seeds of a European plant.

New England Aster is an erect perennial that grows to a height of 2’ to 6’ tall with a stout root crown or thick, short rhizome and clustered stems, usually with spreading hairs. The leaves are alternate, sessile, entire, lanceolate, 1” to 4” long with pointed lobes at the base that conspicuously clasp the stem. The ray flowers range from violet, rose, or magenta and are very showy. The disk flowers are yellow. This aster is one of our largest and showiest asters. There can be from 40 to 80 ray flowers on a head! These asters bloom from August to October and are a critical late-season nectar plant for butterflies, especially the Monarch, that stock up for their long migration to Mexico. New England Asters are found in mesic to wet open woods and fields across Kentucky. They prefer average to moist soil and full sun. Not only are the New England Asters critical for Monarch butterflies, it is the host plant for the Pearl Crescent and one of the host plants for the Saddleback Caterpillar Moth. Several game birds, including the wild turkey, a few songbirds, including the tree sparrow, and small mammals, such as the chipmunk and white-footed mouse, feed on the leaves and seeds. Work plantings of New England Aster into your fall landscape. Use them singly or in small groups in the rear of a sunny border. They look beautiful with our native sunflowers, goldenrods, mistflower and rose mallow. They are also perfect for rain gardens as they thrive on moist to dry soil. They are easy to naturalize in roadside ditches, road banks, and open grassy areas. A sunny site where soil remains moist throughout the season is also ideal. Asters have always been recognized as decorations. The flowers of most species last several days after being picked and put into vases, so what better than New England Asters in beautiful fall arrangements along with other fall bloomers.

Observations on Cohabitation with a Native Landscape

By Karen Lanier

I am a transplant. I’m not a Kentucky native, and I’ve become naturalized here. In 2012, I shifted my lifestyle from migratory traveler to a rooted homesteader when I moved from the arid southwest to the lush and verdant southeast. By staying in one place for the past several years, my restless wandering spirit has calmed down. In the forest garden that my partner, Russ Turpin, and I call our yard, I find unexpected joy in relationships between myself and the place, the plants, and the animals.

Curiosity and a disdain for boredom spurs me to learn more about the natural world. I don’t take for granted the beauty of our natural yard that buffers our home from the traffic, heat and noise of the city.

My home environment is much more urban than many of the places I’ve lived, so it’s important for me to bring nature as close as possible. A landscape full of native plants, providing habitat for insects, birds, amphibians, and mammals, is also a vibrant space for human creatures like me to just be. Daily comforts of my forest-y yard include the smell of moist leaf litter, dappled shade of oaks and redbuds, rain droplets bejeweling jewelweed, wild mushrooms appearing in all colors and shapes, and spicebush hedges that provide a privacy screen.

It’s not all peace and harmony though. Nature can be a difficult neighbor. I’d like to share four main considerations for the novice natural landscaper to be mindful of. In any relationship, it’s important to manage our expectations and work with natural tendencies.

1. Scaling Down

As I’ve come to terms with the smaller adventures that await me just outside my back door, my appreciation for the little things has grown immensely. I had never known the spectacular scenes of fireflies as a child, so I’m full of wonder at these luminescent fairy-like creatures on warm summer nights. (https://www.hobbyfarms.com/the-decline-of-fireflies/)

A spicebush swallowtail caterpillar graced our garden and kept us turning leaves over to check on it for weeks. Finding other insect eggs underneath leaves is like discovering new life on another planet, but it’s right under our noses all the time! Within our 7,000 square foot yard, keeping an eye out for the incremental changes in the landscape gives me a reason to take slow and quiet walks, and look and listen closely.

Fitting everything we want into the property requires a lot of creativity, and some compromises. Planting in layers maximizes space. I have learned that there are not many colorful flowers that grow in the shade, so our yard is monochromatic compared to our neighbors’ sunny and nearly treeless lots. Accepting that the yard is a woodland rather than a park ecosystem was an important step in stopping the cycle of wanting something to grow just because I like it, only to watch it die because it’s the wrong plant in the wrong space.

Now, we have agreed to leave a space open until we find the right shade-loving plant for the forest floor layer. Some happy residents there are wild ginger (Asarum canadense), stinging nettle (Urtica dioica), and a variety of ferns and sedges. Our newest additions are forest medicinals: black cohosh (Actaea racemosa), ginseng (Panax quinquefolius), and goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis). Planted last fall, they are thriving under the protection of our big pin oak. It feels like we have made a new friend who feels right at home. Their habitat is the right size, has the right amount of light, and fits them with just the right amount of space.

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Ecological Effects of Amur Honeysuckle Infestations

By David D. Taylor

This article expands on Invasive Plant Corner – Bush Honeysuckle (Lonicera Spp.), in the April 2020 issue.

Amur honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii) is the most widespread and arguably the most invasive of the nonnative invasive honeysuckle shrubs in Kentucky. Jeff Nelson’s article on Amur honeysuckle provides a general overview of the species. This article provides some details as to why this species is so invasive and why is an ecologically undesirable species.

Amur honeysuckle, native to central and northeastern China, Japan (rare), Korea, and far eastern Russia, occurs as an understory shrub in open hardwood and mixed hardwood-conifer forest consisting of oaks, elms and other hardwoods and fir, spruce and hemlock. It is also known from and more common in riparian and scrub communities (Luken and Thieret 1996). It grows as scattered individual shrubs or small clumps, not unlike viburnums do in Kentucky. Large, dense stands do not typically occur, but in open, riparian areas it can be weedy. In its native range, individuals typically do not exceed 4 inches diameter and 20 feet tall (Yang et al. 2011). In Kentucky, the species is often an understory shrub in open forest, but forms dense thickets at forest edge, along fence rows and in open areas. It grows larger here as well, to 6 inches diameter and 30 feet tall (personal observation).

Large Amur honeysuckle, two stems 5 inches or greater in diameter.
29 April 2020.
Photo by David Taylor

This shrub leaves out early in spring, often breaking bud in mid-March, long before native trees and shrubs. By mid-April of most years, leaves are fully expanded, and the shrubs are actively growing. In the fall, Amur honeysuckle typically senesces (leaves turn yellow and drop) in late October to mid-November, and sometimes not until early December. Native trees and shrubs typically break bud late March to mid-April and do not fully expand until early May. In eastern Kentucky, they are actively dropping their leaves by mid- to late October in most years. The extra 5-8 weeks of photosynthetic activity in the honeysuckle allows it to store additional energy giving it an edge over native species (McEwan et al. 2009). It is also somewhat tolerant of late freezes. Both promote its invasive nature.

Tall Amur honeysuckle, approximately 27 feet tall.
29 April 2020.
Photo by David Taylor

While Amur honeysuckle grows better in full sun (Luken 1995), it is known to survive in 1 percent of full sunlight in the heavy shade of trees (Luken et al. 1997a). The native spring flowering spice bush (Lindera benzoin) by comparison, requires about 25 % of full sun to survive (Luken et al. 1997a). Forest grown Amur honeysuckle under heavy shade tends to produce few stems which grow upward toward light specks. They tend not to have much branching, nor do they attain much diameter. In the open, individual shrubs produce numerous stems and branching is extensive. Maximum diameters are obtained in the open (Luken et al 1995a). Overtopped Amur honeysuckle shrubs respond with the production of long, upright stems that seek light. Honeysuckle in open forest may branch extensively and produce heavy shade.

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5 Ways to Attract Bees to Your Garden

By Emily Royal

We could all use a little help in the garden, but good help is hard to find. Thankfully, nature provides the best helpers money can’t buy: bees! The trick is attracting these handy pollinators to your garden.

1: Native Plants, Please

One of the best ways to lure bees to your garden is by filling it with native plants. The scarlet bee balm (Monarda didyma) is a great option. It erupts in firework shaped red blooms in June and requires full sunlight. The native lonicera will also attract bees, unlike the invasive lonicera or busy honeysuckle, which is pollinated by moths. Native plants are crucial for creating a healthy ecosystem, and they practically take care of themselves. Since they’re acclimated to Kentucky’s climate and soil, they’ll need little water or maintenance. Certain natives can even decrease water runoff and erosion. In addition to bees, they’ll attract other native wildlife to your garden.

2: Make it Colorful

Bees have an acute sense of smell and a keen eye for color. Bees use color to help find the best flowers for pollination: certain colors (yellow and blue) will draw their attention more than others. By diversifying your garden’s color palette, you’ll entice even more bees. Try adding purple milkweed (Asclepias purpurea) to brighten up your garden. These flowers produce star-shaped blooms in June and July, and also attract monarch butterflies. You can also add sweet coneflower (Rudbeckia subtomentosa) for a splash of yellow. Sweet coneflower blooms from July to September.

3: Shady Spaces

Creating a hospitable environment for your garden helpers is easy. Choose plants that create enough shade and shelter from the wind and direct sunlight to give your guests a place to rest. The longer bees stay in your garden, the longer they can pollinate your plants! To keep bees in your garden longer, create a small bee bath. Fill a shallow dish with water and rocks or decorative pebbles. Be sure to change the water frequently. This lets your visitors take a quick, refreshing sip without leaving your garden.

4: No Pesticides

Keep pesticides out of your garden. Even organic pesticides can harm and deter bees from visiting. Native plants will naturally deter harmful pests. Pesticides won’t kill only visiting bees. Workers crawling over your blooms carry the pesticides back to their hives. The introduction of pesticide to a hive can contribute to Colony Collapse Disorder. This causes the other bees to abandon their hive, resulting in the death of the colony.

5: Bee Our Guest

Create a safe place for your bee visitors to rest by building your own bee hotel. Group bamboo tubes or cardboard tubes together. You can also drill holes into wooden blocks. Bee hotels do need to be maintained, so it’s something to consider when you start working on your new DIY project. The hotels provide bees with safe nesting options to ensure they stick around your garden. In addition, experts suggest that you keep them small and specific; attracting too many species to the same hotel can increase disease and predation.

Bees are a crucial part of our ecosystem, and harmful practices have endangered them. Choosing native plants makes your garden a hospitable place for our pollinating friends.

Emily is an environmental journalist whose home is filled with native plants and flowers. When she’s not tending to her indoor plants, you’ll find her in her vegetable garden, which she doesn’t mind sharing with the local wildlife. She loves pugs and pizza, oh, and her husband, too.

Plant Opportunities to Attract Hummingbirds this Summer

By Katrina Kelly

Hummingbirds are fun birds to watch flying through the garden. There is something very intriguing about them that draws our attention. Maybe it’s that they are small yet strong, fast flyers, and hover in midair to drink nectar from flowers. It’s no wonder so many gardeners desire to draw them nearer by planting a hummingbird garden.

In my own garden, I like to plant both native and non-native flowers to attract them. I have been quite surprised to see what flowers the hummingbirds like. It is true hummingbirds are very attracted to the color red, but they are attracted to other colors as well. They are also typically attracted to plants that have tubular shaped flowers, but not always. There are some native plant choices that I’d consider necessary in any hummingbird garden.

One of the best plants for a hummingbird garden are the bee balms (Monarda). The most common bee balm you find in home gardens is red bee balm (Monarda didyma) and its cultivars. This species of bee balm likes average to moist soils. Its cousin, wild bee balm (Monarda fistulosa) also attracts hummingbirds and likes average to dry soils. For the hummers that are traveling through in spring, try attracting them with Bradbury bee balm (Monarda bradburiana). It flowers earlier in the season than the other bee balms. It is a shorter plant, so it is excellent for more compact garden spaces.

The native red honeysuckle vine (Lonicera sempervirens) is also an easy hummingbird attractor. Its long red tubular flowers bloom nearly all summer. This vine needs some room to grow, so plan to grow it on a good-sized trellis or arbor.

One other native plant not seen as commonly in home gardens is hoary skullcap (Scutellaria incana). I have this planted near my hummingbird feeder, and the hummingbirds cannot get enough of this plant. It has purple flowers that flower nearly all summer, which is another great reason to plant it. It does like to spread by seed, so if you want to reduce its spread, just remove the ripe seed heads in late summer and fall.

One of my favorite plants that attracts hummingbirds is the native blue sage (Salvia azurea). It flowers later in the summer and will continue into fall, so it is a great nectar source for hummingbirds as they prepare for their fall migration. It’s a tall and slender plant, and one of the few flowers that has a true blue flower. Other notable native plants that attract hummingbirds are royal catchfly (Silene regia), fire pink (Silene virginica), Indian pink (Spigelia marilandica), tall phlox (Phlox paniculata), beardtongue (Penstemon), wild columbine (Aquilegia canadensis), and cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis).

There are also many non-native annual flowers that attract hummingbirds. I enjoy planting many of these around my patio spaces to encourage hummingbird visitors to the garden and the feeder near my patio. Some of my favorites are verbena, pineapple sage, lantana, tomatillo, annual salvias, Mexican sunflower, and Spanish flag vine. Many of these plants are native to Central and South America, so hummingbirds are familiar with them from their southern migration.

Hummingbirds love to take a rest and perch, so they will appreciate something to rest on near your feeder or hummingbird garden. It’s also a great opportunity to watch the hummingbirds or take photos. I once watched a hummingbird sit on the perch I have near my feeder take a bath in the summer rain.

To attract hummingbirds throughout the year, plant your hummingbird garden with a diversity of plants that will flower throughout the season. Planting them in a grouping together will encourage the birds to visit your garden routinely and provide more opportunities to watch them all summer.

Katrina Kelly is a native to Lexington, Kentucky. She is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and has a degree in Landscape Architecture and Music. She is the owner and solopreneur of EARTHeim Landscape Design in Lexington, which focuses on creating unique garden designs with native plants and backyard homesteads. Her interest in native plants began when she volunteered at Salato with Mary Carol Cooper in 2005. She is a board member of the Wild Ones organization in Lexington. In the small amount of time she is not thinking about gardens or gardening, she enjoys photography, writing, science, fitness and nutrition, and building or crafting things around the home.

Forgotten Grasslands of the South: Natural History and Conservation

By Reed Noss

Reviewed by Jonathan O.C. Kubesch, University of Tennessee

I work in the space between traditional agronomy and ecology with my career in grasslands. While I refer to journal articles for the bulk of my work, a reference book holds an important place for my field. Generally, I go to the library or through hearsay to come across some obscure text with a great description of this species or that agricultural practice. Ah, the life of a graduate student! However, in the case of Reed Noss’ Forgotten Grasslands of the South: Natural History and Conservation, I could not have found a better time to dive into a well-assembled dissection of these oft-overlooked ecosystems. My copy comes courtesy of Dwayne Estes (Southeastern Grasslands Initiative), and came it to me while in the field looking for running buffalo clover (Trifolium stoloniferum) in Davidson County, Tennessee. After an unsuccessful hunt, I poured over the book in concert with my own travels around the Southeast.

Noss thoroughly expands the conceptual grassland well beyond the tallgrass and mixed-grass prairies of my background to include the glades, buffalo traces, and barrens. Following the author’s same journey as an Ohio buckeye gone south, I happened to visit Myakka State Park in Florida as part of my best friend’s wedding and got a similar feel for Southern grasslands that Forgotten Grasslands highlights in an interweaving description of basic ecology and applied conservation. While broad in geographic range, the book gives a great description of the Bluegrass Region and some of the floral diversity present within the relatively developed region. Having just sampled the native clover in the region, I then read into the magic of my travels within the wider context.

The grassland ecological model put forward is a strong one for natural systems and is explored in the context of systems dominated by fire, soil, water, and herbivory. Kentucky’s ecological diversity offers examples of all these natural processes. KNPS members might think of river scours in comparison to calcareous glades. Colorful plates showcase the diversity of ecosystems and the species richness within these systems. Land Between the Lakes and the inner Bluegrass are featured alongside Blue Licks Battlefield State Park.

Conservation is a key concern in Kentucky’s native plant sphere. In addition to the floral diversity of the Southeast, the economic opportunity, favorable climate, and social hospitality have led many to move here. Rather than running out these recent arrivals, highlighting this biodiversity and the backyard endemism is seen as a promising strategy to improve the future of these plant species. While not everyone will push through a Solidago key, we can all appreciate the various forms that grace the state. Even outside of the strict grassland context, Daniel Boone National Forest and Big South Fork offer well-marked sandworts for beginners and a diversity of pignuts (Carya spp.) for the initiated.

Forgotten Grasslands of the South appeals to the reader as a primer on these often overlooked ecosystems. Most of us have a collection of carefully-chosen botanical curations and do not generally gather the wider system. However, Reed Noss has succeeded in seeing the grassland through the trees.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to John A. Lodi of Ann Arbor, Michigan for inspiration and suggestions on this review. Thanks to the Chance and Lodi family for giving me a relaxing time to read and discuss this book with a wider popular audience.

Jonathan Omar Cole Kubesch is a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in crop science at the University of Tennessee. He studied evolution and ecology—as well as agronomy—at the Ohio State University. He works on forages, grasslands, and prairies with a particular passion for native clovers.

Grant Winner Spotlight: Calvin Andries

Calvin Andries

KNPS has many research grant opportunities; you can read about them and recent winners by viewing the Grants page. Recently, editor Nick Koenig caught up with 2018 winner, Calvin Andries to see how his research was going, and here’s what Calvin had to say.

During the 2018 growing season, I conducted vascular floras of two wetlands within the Red River Gorge Geological Area and Clifty Wilderness. The floras were created using vouchers I collected, and some herbarium records for a total of 106 vouchers from 2016–2018; they documented 35 families, 49 genera, and 61 species. The most taxon-rich families were Cyperaceae (10 spp.), Fagaceae (four spp.), and Rubiaceae (four spp.). This study investigated two NatureServe ecological systems – an Appalachian sinkhole and depression pond with the upland sweetgum-red maple pond association, and a Cumberland seepage forest with a forested swamp bog association.

The full results of this study are currently in review for publication, but this project wouldn’t have happened without the guidance of my advisor, Dr. Brad Ruhfel, and the support from the Society of Herbarium Curators, the Kentucky Society of Natural History, Battelle, and of course the Kentucky Native Plant Society. Without the support of these great groups I wouldn’t have been able to make the 20+ collecting trips and purchased the collecting supplies needed to conduct this flora.

Since finishing my flora, I have graduated from Eastern Kentucky University and have moved down south to the University of Georgia where I am pursuing a Masters of Science in Forestry and Natural Resources with a wildlife emphasis.

My masters thesis work will look a little different from my undergraduate research, but will be staying in the realm of botany. I am working with a power company to develop a way to remotely identify natural prairies along powerline right-of-ways in the eastern half of the Piedmont region of Georgia. This project will help preserve these uncommon early-successional habitats and document the impact they have on pollinators such as the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus). In addition, this project will rely on a combination of field work, herbarium records, and citizen science data.

If anyone finds themselves in Georgia over the next year, make sure to post what flowers you see! Thank you to everyone at Kentucky Native Plant Society and within the botanical community in Kentucky for the support you gave me through undergrad, and for the well wishes as I continue my academic journey.