The Lady Slipper Archives - Page 27 of 49 - Kentucky Native Plant Society

Benefits of native grasses in urban landscaping

By Susan Harkins and Jonathan Kubesch

Prairie dropseed ((*Sporobolus heterolepis*). Photo: Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Years ago, when I started planting native species for wildlife, I planted trees and flowers. My commitment to natives is strong, and I’ve restored nearly half of my property with native species of trees, shrubs, and flowering plants. Only one thing is missing, and that’s native grasses. Native grasslands and savannah are part of Kentucky’s rich natural heritage.

Native grasses provide a showy, functional addition to the backyard, the field corner, or the fencerow. At the time, I didn’t know the many benefits for our native wildlife that native grasses offer.

Improve ecosystem function

At the heart of every successful garden is the right soil. Regardless of your soil type, keeping topsoil and runoff in your urban yard can be a challenge. Traditional lawns can prevent erosion and runoff under ideal conditions, but native landscaping protects soil and water from more extreme weather events with fewer inputs. Some people plant rain gardens to prevent run-off but native grasses are also good at holding soil in place thanks to their long, fibrous, strong roots. Grasses help build organic matter and increase water infiltration. It doesn’t hurt that they require little maintenance and that they’re beautiful.

Native grasses also have reduced soil fertility requirements in comparison to many introduced species. Work from Kentucky and Tennessee suggests that most soils can support these grasses with modest additions of P and K (Potassium and Phosphorus) both of which can come from compost or the regular breakdown of organic matter in the yard. Native grasses can make a yard more of a closed loop for cycling nutrients.

Improve habitat

Until I started following the Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife Resources program on how native grasses benefit songbirds, I had no idea how important native grasses are to wildlife. I was aware of how game birds, such as quail, benefit from native grasses, but almost everything benefits from native grasses. Songbirds benefit from the insects, grass seed, and habitat available in native grasses. The open space at the ground level allows baby birds to move freely and the cover of native grasses provides protection from predators.

Eastern bottlebrush (*Elymus hystrix* L.). Photo Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Native grasses are host to a number of butterfly and moth species in their larval stage. Rebuilding these populations will help rebuild the bird populations as many feed caterpillars to the young. While not every yard might produce a full ecosystem, there’s research underway at Virginia Tech about how to use native grasses and wildflowers to produce bee-friendly beef.

Establishing native grasses

Converting current lawns or garden space to native grasses requires some planning and preparation. The easiest areas to convert towards native grasses are formerly wooded areas or cropland. In subdivisions, this might be a new home. Old pastures and lawns can be difficult to convert to native grasses because of the existing weed issues present. That said, attention to detail can make areas work for native grasses.

Start with a soil test from the University of Kentucky to get a baseline for any fertility adjustments. Killing existing vegetation needs to be as effective as possible. Research across the mid-South currently leans towards a “spray-smother-spray” approach where the current vegetation is killed, a competitive smother crop is grown to outcompete any surviving weeds, and then that crop is killed prior to planting native grasses. In your urban yard, an organic alternative might be to use solarization, tillage, or intensive mowing to kill existing vegetation.

Depending on the area to cover, one might consider buying seed or plugs. For plugs, assume that a native grass plant can be anywhere from one to three feet in diameter, so be sure to plan accordingly. Seeding can be a challenge given the seed is fluffy; try mixing the seed with play sand, cracked corn, or pelletized lime to make it easier to broadcast. Native grass seeding rates can vary, but plan to eventually get at least 1 seedling per square foot of allotted space.

Limiting weed competition is crucial in the establishment period, as has been seen in recent work from Virginia Tech. Introduced annual grasses, such as foxtails and crabgrass, can be hard to control in native stands. If using plugs, consider mulching around plants with straw.

When considering where to add native grasses to your landscaping, keep in mind that they’re difficult to move once established. The only non-chemical way to remove them is to mow them to the ground several times over the next few growing seasons.

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Poetry Corner

By Liz Neihoff

We only live
in a lighter sea
and so hear and
see, in Summer’s
cottonwood crowns,
South Sea breakers
where big salt lands.

Wax is buffed
to green crystal shine.
As thousands of gimbeling
leaves dance and flash
at Summer’s height.
A welcome sound
of moist air comes
over the ridges,
all free as a breeze.

Southeast Medicinal Plants

By Coreypine Shane

Reviewed by Susan Harkins

Southeast Medicinal Plants is a guide for foraging wild medicinal plants in the United States southeast. I was hoping for an ethical review of the subject, and I wasn’t disappointed. My first stop was ginseng and here’s the first sentence: “This book is sharing how to identify ginseng (aka American ginseng) so you can observe it, not to harvest it.”

American ginseng is unethically and illegally wild-harvested throughout the Appalachians, which is quickly decimating wild populations. I appreciate the author’s honesty and his encouragement to grow your own or purchase only from reputable sources who don’t harvest from the wild.

The book’s first section is a guide on how to identify, harvest and use medicinal plants. The greater part of the book is an alphabetical guide to medicinal plants. Each plant includes a clear picture, information on how to identify the plant in the wild, where and how to wildcraft the plant and finally, how to prepare it for medicinal use. Harvesting information specifies methods for doing the least damage to the plant.

My favorite part of each section is “Future harvests.” The author identifies plants that have unusual growing habits or is of ecological concern, so you know whether harvesting what you’ve found is safe and ethical.

Given the nature of this book, it includes some non-native and often invasive plants. That isn’t a criticism; I’m all for harvesting invasives. I hope in a future edition, the author decides to use the term “invasive” and encourage foragers not to grow them on their property.

Coreypine Shane is founder of the Blue Ridge School of Herbal Medicine in Asheville, North Carolina. He has advised clients, taught classes, and presenter lectures for more than 25 years. He hosts a web sit at blueridgeschool.org.

Field Trip to Buena Vista Glades – July 9, 2022

Date of trip: 7/9/2022
Start time: 10AM
Location: Buena Vista Glade, Taylor, Indiana
Difficulty of hike: Moderate to Difficult. The glade is very rugged. We’ll hike about a mile and it will take probably two hours knowing plant nerds. And there are always ticks.

**^{Whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata)}**

Join Kentucky Native Plant Society member Alan Abbott on a field trip to Buena Vista Glade in Taylor, Indiana, about 50 minutes west from downtown Louisville. Plants that will likely be in flower include green milkweed (Asclepias verdiflora), whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata), and glade St. John’s-wort (Hypernicum dolabriforme). With a little luck we might also see Ozark bunchflower (Melanthium woodii) in bloom.

**^{Ozark bunchflower (Melanthium woodii)}**

One of the defining characteristics of the Bluegrass and Pennyroyal Plateau regions is the presence of small, rocky glades. Broadly speaking, a glade is any clearing in a forest. But in our part of the country, it tends to refer to areas with a shallow soil and a limestone bedrock, usually on south- or west-facing slopes. Without trees shading everything out, a rich layer of grasses and forbs emerges. As islands of grassland within larger forested areas, they tend to have high rates of endemism, or plants found only within one, relatively small area. Some plants can be found only in a few counties (like Kentucky gladecress, Leavenworthia exigua var. laciniata) or a narrow region, like the Interior Low Plateau, which runs from northern Alabama, through central Tennessee and Kentucky and into south-central Indiana.

Their isolation means that glades separated by only a few miles can have surprisingly different plant communities. In Harrison County, Indiana, which has similar shallow soils and limestone bedrock as Kentucky’s Bluegrass Region, one glade may have hundreds of Echinacea and a similar one walking distance away won’t have any.

Sign Up for the Field Trip

Because of the fragile nature of glade plant communities, we are limiting sign-ups to 10 people.

Wildflower Weekend 2022

by Heidi Braunreiter, KNPS Vice President & Jeff Nelson, KNPS President

From April 8th through the 10th, over 100 native plant enthusiasts came together to enjoy KNPS’ first, in-person, Wildflower Weekend since 2019. Although temperatures were cool and skies were damp at Natural Bridge SRP, spirits were high as folks dressed for the weather and enjoyed 14 different native plant walks led by an incredible group of expert botanists. Saturday night, a large group of KNPS members and friends met in the Woodland Center for presentations by Ted Brancheau, Nick Koenig, and the keynote speaker, Mike Homoya.

Wildflower Walks

Beginning at noon on Friday and ending Sunday morning, fourteen wildflower walks, led by some of the best botanists in the country, explored the amazing diversity of the plant communities in Natural Bridge SRP and the Red River Gorge. Here’s some shots from the walks.

Carolina Vetch (Vicia carolina)
Red trillium (Trillium erectum)
Search for sweet pinesap.
Sweet pinesap (Monotropsis odorata)
Striped wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata)
Virginia pennywort (Obolaria virginica)
Bishop’s cap (Mitella diphylla)
Members & Friends Friday Evening Campfire
Woodland phlox (Phlox divaricata)
Trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens)
Downy serviceberry(Amelanchier arborea)
Lichen walk
Cranefly orchid (Tipularia discolor)
Long-spurred violet (Viola rostrata)
Rock Bridge Trail

Discussions about next year’s Wildflower Weekend 2023 are already happening. Dates and the location are not set yet, but be thinking about the first half of April as the general time-frame. If you have any thoughts about how the event could be made better, we would love to hear from you. If you would like to lead or co-lead a walk next year, let us know. KYPlants@knps.org.

The sweet, sweet pinesap (Monotropsis odorata)

Tara Littlefield, OKNP Botanist, KNPS board member

The sweet, sweet pinesap (Monotropsis odorata), a globally rare little herbaceous plant related to the heath family (now placed in the family Monotropaceae, formerly in the Ericaceae), gets its name from the sweet, clove like scent it emits in the early spring. It is one of those plants that you can find just by using your nose. In fact, you would have better luck finding this plant by its smell rather than sight as it’s a master of disguise, camouflaging its tiny self (just a couple inches tall) among the oak and pine leaf litter in the acidic uplands of the Appalachians.

In addition to its diminutive size, camouflaged adaptations, and strong sweet odor, it is even more of an oddity in the plant world. This little hidden plant gets its energy NOT from the sun, a characteristic plant trait, but from partnering up with mycorrhizal fungi in the soil! No need to photosynthesize and be green if you have friendly fungus among us to help you out. There are not that many plants that have chosen this path of forgoing the sun and going all in with fungal co evolution. These same mycorrhizal fungi are also attached to the roots of the oaks and pines of the acidic Appalachian ridgetop forests and serve an important role of creating an underground network of plants and fungi communicating and sharing nutrients for survival. They call this type of plant a mycoheterotroph-a plant that gets its energy from mycorrhizal fungi.

Pollen from the sweet pinesap falls to the ground. @Littlefield.

One of my favorite springtime rituals in Kentucky is to visit the Red River Gorge at the end of March to early April and use my nose to locate patches of sweet pinesap while hiking along the trails of the upland ridges. During the KNPS wildflower weekend this year, a group of excited plant enthusiasts did just that. Walking the pine oak ridge tops, our group took in the scenes of chestnut oaks, scraggly pitch and Virginia pines, and among the little violets, bluets and tufts of pin cushion and broom moss, a faint sweet smell became stronger, until it was so strong our group stopped and knew we were upon a sweet pinesap population. Looking around the leaf litter, we finally located the sweet pine sap, and we all dropped to the ground to view this little beauty in all is glory, enamored by its wonderful smell and amazing adaptations for survival.

**KNPS hike to search for the elusive sweet pinesap.**

KNPS BotanyBlitz 2022

by Vanessa Voelker

Last year one of the components of our “Virtual” Wildflower Week 2021 was KNPS’s first BotanyBlitz event, hosted on the iNaturalist platform. A BotanyBlitz is a plant-focused BioBlitz, which is an event where participants try to document as many species as possible within a certain geographical location during a set period of time. We felt the event was such a success that even though we returned to in-person events for Wildflower Weekend 2022, we decided to keep the weeklong BotanyBlitz as part of the annual event.

BotanyBlitz Winners

We have awarded a small prize (KNPS coffee mug!) to the first place participants in three categories: Most Species Observed, Most Observations, and Most Identifications. So without further ado, here are the winners of the 2022 BotanyBlitz!

For the categories of both Most Species Observed and Most Observations, Nick Koenig (@nick_koenig1) swept the first-place spot with 224 species observed and a total of 294 observations made over the course of the week. Congrats to Nick for his awesome botanizing! In the category of Most Identifications, Pennsylvania resident Burlton Griffith (@burls) came in first place with an incredible 1,632 observations made for Kentucky botanizers. We’re grateful for all the identification help we can get during iNaturalist events, no matter where it comes from, and @burls’s contribution to the ID effort this year was invaluable! To see the rest of the leaderboard in all three categories, check out the project overview page on iNaturalist.

BotanyBlitz 2022 and 2021 Compared

This year, the BotanyBlitz was scheduled a week earlier than it was last year, and the cooler-than-average weather from March to early April resulted in a slower emergence of spring flora. The effects of this are definitely reflected when you compare the most observed species in 2021 and 2022, as earlier-blooming species were observed much more frequently this year. For example, the most observed species for this year’s BotanyBlitz was Cutleaf toothwort (Cardamine concatenata) with 105 observations, and the vast majority of these observations showed plants in full bloom. Contrast this with last year’s blitz, where Cutleaf Toothwort was in 29th place, and about a third of it was already past flowering and starting to develop fruits. Last year, the most observed species was Dwarf Larkspur (Delphinium tricorne) with 72 observations, and with nearly all observed plants in full bloom. This year Dwarf Larkspur was in 10th place, and about half of the plants seen were only in bud.

Despite the slower and cooler spring, this year’s BotanyBlitz showed a lot of growth compared to last year. We actually observed more species this year (539 species compared to 462 in 2021), increased our total observations by almost 1,500 (4,614 vs. 3,169) and had more participants (121 observers compared to 109). Just a note — the data on iNaturalist are constantly changing, as identifications can be added or changed over time, so all numbers reported here are just a snapshot.

Rare Species Observations

Participants also observed a number of rare spring flora this year, click the links to check out the observations on iNaturalist!

Running Buffalo Clover (Trifolium stoloniferum, Threatened): On the Kick-off day of the BotanyBlitz, Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves botanists Heidi Braunreiter and Rachel Cook lead an iNaturalist tutorial hike in Lexington, where participants were able to observe a well-managed population of this former federally-endangered species.
False Mermaidweed (Floerkea proserpinacoides, Special Concern): Several observations of this small annual species showed healthy and abundant populations in wooded parks of Kenton County.
Sweet Pinesap (Monotropsis odorata, Threatened): Several populations of this unique and highly fragrant species were seen (and smelled!) by hikers during Wildflower Weekend at Natural Bridge State Park.
Smallflower Baby Blue Eyes (Nemophila aphylla, Threatened): A new population of this species was discovered in Trigg County just prior to the Kickoff Day, and was revisited during the BotanyBlitz.
Kentucky Gladecress (Leavenworthia exigua var. laciniata, Endangered): This tiny and very rare glade-dweller was observed several times in flower during the BotanyBlitz.
Glade Violet (Viola egglestonii, Special Concern): Another glade species, this was observed by OKNP botanists while surveying for Kentucky Gladecress.

Wildflower Photos

Finally, the most important part of the BotanyBlitz is the gorgeous photos of Kentucky’s spring wildflowers. Here are a few that caught our eye:

Always a challenging flower to photograph,
@ktuttlewheeler expertly captured the tiny snowflake-like
flowers of Twoleaf Miterwort (*Mitella diphylla*)

Thanks to all of the BotanyBlitz participants for making this year’s project so successful, we hope to see you all again in 2023. In the meantime, if you enjoyed the BotanyBlitz and are looking for more iNaturalist projects to participate in, consider joining the 2022 Kentucky Botanists Big Year project: this is an event similar to the BotanyBlitz, but is a yearlong event rather than just one week, and it’s a great way to become more familiar with Kentucky’s flora across the seasons!