Field Trip to Miller Fork with the Red River Gorge Climbers Coalition

Meaghan Petix & Alan Abbott

On April 19th, KNPS partnered with the Red River Gorge Climbers Coalition for a botanical hike of their Miller Fork property in Lee County.  Approximately 20 members of KNPS and RRGCC were guided by Dan and Judie Dourson, the authors of the book Wildflowers and Ferns of the Red River Gorge and Greater Red River Basin. 

The hike began along the banks of Hell Creek, where there was a striking display of spring wildflowers, including Red Trillium (Trillium erectum), Dwarf Crested Iris (Iris cristata), Showy Orchis (Galearis spectabilis), Creeping Foamflower (Tirella stolonifera), and Buffalo Nut (Pyrularia pubera). Canada Lily (Lilium canadense) was emerging. 

Red Trillium (Trillium erectum)
Showy Orchis (Galearis spectabilis)
Creeping Foamflower
(Tirella stolonifera)

The group then followed a trail into an enchanting rock garden before stopping along a sandstone cliff line to discuss its fragile ecosystem, which harbors many specialized plants and animals.  The exposed rock was adorned with vivid crustose lichens. Dan Dourson spotted a Green Salamander (Aneides aeneus) nestled in a rock crevice.  

KNPS is funding the reprinting of Wildflowers and Ferns of the Red River Gorge and Greater Red River Basin.

Meaghan Petix is the Volunteer Coordinator of the Kentucky Native Plant Society. Alan Abbott is Field Trips Coordinator of the Kentucky Native Plant Society.

Field Trip to Hematite Lake with KY Master Naturalists

Jeff Nelson, KNPS President

On Saturday, April 26, KNPS led a group of Kentucky Master Naturalists on a botanically oriented hike around Hematite Lake in the Land Between the Lakes in Trigg County. With beautiful weather and lots of native species in bloom, the 2 mile loop around the lake was a wonderful way to spend the day.

Hematite Lake is a small, man-made lake, created in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. The orientation of the lake, which runs roughly east-west, makes for some interesting habitats. The southern side of the lake, with a northern exposure, is a mesic woodland. The western end of the lake, where Long Creek enters the lake, is a wetland. The northern side of the lake, with its southern exposure is a much drier woodland.

The mesic woods had many species of native spring flowers in bloom or just getting ready to bloom. Among the species we saw were dwarf crested iris (Iris cristata), rue anemone (Thalictrum thalictroides), wild comfrey (Andersonglossum virginianum), violet wood sorrel (Oxalis violacea), star chickweed (Stellaria pubera), spring beauty (Claytonia virginica), dwarf larkspur (Delphinium tricorne), woodland phlox (Phlox divaricataI), common greenbriar (Smilax rotundifolia), and prairie trillium (Trillium recurvatum). In a drier ridge area, we saw several patches of cranefly orchid (Tipularia discolor).

As we walked along the southern portion of the trail, we began seeing many zebra swallowtail butterflies (Eurytides marcellus). This was not surprising as this part of the trail had lots of pawpaw trees (Asimina triloba) and pawpaws are the only host plant for this lovely butterfly.

The west end of Hematite Lake is wetland. Few of the wetland species were in flower, but we did see lots of young, swamp chestnut oak (Quercus michauxii), broadleaf arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia), American lotus (Nelumbo lutea), and buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis).

The woods on the northern side of Hematite Lake are much drier than the southern side and have a different mix of natives. Lots of two-flowered Cynthia (Krigia bicolor) were blooming throughout the woods. We also saw an interesting native tick-trefoil, round-leaved trailing tick trefoil (Desmodium rotundifolium).

Zebra swallowtail (Eurytides marcellus)
Swamp chestnut oak (Quercus michauxii)
Two-flower Cynthia (Krigia biflora)
Round-leaved trailing tick trefoil (Desmodium rotundifolium)

KNPS 2025 Pollinator Garden Grant Winners!

By Susan Harkins

This photo shows a planting of native flowers.

This year, we were thrilled to receive nearly 30 worthy applications for this $500 garden grant. Picking only five was difficult for the committee: David Taylor, Rachel Cook, Kelly Watson, and Susan Harkins.

These grants are used to establish or expand pollinator gardens for educational outreach. This year’s winners follow, in no particular order.

Friends of Walter Bradley Park

Midway is home to the 28-acre Walter Bradley Park, near downtown Midway in northern Woodford county. This group plans to replace non-natives with natives by establishing a pollinator garden for educational programs. If you’d like to donate further, click the park link in the first line and browse down about halfway to find the donation link.

Friends of Carter Caves

Carter Caves is a Kentucky state park located in Olive Hill. This garden will be used to educate visitors and school groups about the importance of pollinators and Kentucky natives for providing food and habitat for Kentucky wildlife. If you wish to donate, you can use the Contact Us link or call the park directly to get more information.

Sawyer Hayes Community Center

Louisville’s E.P. Tom Sawyer State Park sponsors the Sawyer Hayes Community Center. Their new pollinator garden will offer educational and enrichment opportunities for visitors and educational groups. For information on how to donate to this worthy cause, contact the community center directly.

Wright Elementary School

Shelbyville is the home to the Wright Elementary School Jets. Their new garden is a second-grade project, but will be used by the entire school for many academic endeavors. They have big plans for this garden’s future, including an irrigation system, benches, and even a picnic area. If you’d like to donate, please contact the school directly for more information.

Montgomery County Library

The Montgomery County Library is in Mt. Sterling. This new library has a substantial tract of land, and the library hopes to create a program that is environmentally responsible that can also provide education to the community at large regarding pollinators and Kentucky natives. To donate or volunteer, contact the library directly for more information.

Feel free to help

Gardens, even those with native plants, can be expensive and labor-intensive to establish. If you can help by donating or volunteering, please do.

Looking forward to next year

Next year, we hope to open the application process earlier, so we can get checks sent out earlier. This should be especially helpful to school groups who have limited spring days to work before summer. Please be sure to check the fall issues of The Ladyslipper for exact timing.

From the Lady Slipper Archives: Bay Starvine

The Lady Slipper newsletter, and now blog, of the Kentucky Native Plant Society has been published since the Society’s founding in 1986. We occasionally feature an article from a past issue. In this article from 2005, David Taylor, KNPS Board Member, takes an in-depth look at bay starvine (Schisandra glabra), a rare native found in only two counties in Kentucky. This article ran in Vol. 20, No. 3. If you would like to see these and other past issues, visit the Lady Slipper Archives, where all issues from Vol. 1, February 1986 to Vol. 39, 2024, can be found.

Bay Starvine

By David Taylor

Schisandra glabra
Drawing by Joe MacGown (2004)

Kentucky’s flora includes some little known odd plants. Many of these are known only from a few sites. Some may be endemic to the state or be outliers of populations centered elsewhere. One of the plants in the latter category, bay starvine, is of particular interest to me. It is a high climbing vine (actually a liana, a woody vine) which throughout its range is associated with rich, sheltered sites. I was introduced to this species in Louisiana where it is known only from a few parishes (the Louisiana equivalent of county) in the southeastern part of the state. I saw it later in Mississippi and Kentucky.

Bay starvine, sometimes called magnolia vine or scarlet woodbine, is known to the botanical world as Schisandra glabra. An older name, Schisandra coccinea, is sometimes encountered. A variant of the generic name, Schizandra, is sometimes found in 19th and early 20th century literature. This species was long considered part of the Magnolia family, the Magnoliaceae or the Magnoliales (Small 1933; Correll and Johnston 1970). It, like magnolias, has simple flowers with multiple stamens and pistils, and appears to be beetle or fly pollinated. It has simple, alternate leaves, usually with scattered teeth along the margins. In general, it was considered a primitive species, closely related to magnolias. In recent years (see Vincent 1997), all species in the genus and another closely related genus of lianas were elevated to their own family, the Schisandraceae or Schisandra family. The family, while distantly related to the Magnoliaceae, is most closely related to another, the Illiciaceae, (Star Anise family) which also has a strong Old World distribution and an scattered southeastern United States distribution. The two genera, Schisandra and Kadsura, are Old World with the exception of bay starvine. The Old World species are Asian, found largely in China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Sumatra, Borneo, India, Myanmar, Philippines, and Thailand. There are 23 Asian species (plus several subspecies) of Schisandra, and 15 species of Kadsura. Two recent monographs (Saunders 1998, 2000) provide keys, descriptions and drawings for all species.

Continue reading From the Lady Slipper Archives: Bay Starvine →

President’s Message – April, 2025

Jeff Nelson – KNPS President

I am writing this one week after KNPS’s 36th Wildflower Weekend, which was held at Carter Caves SRP, in Carter Co. By all measures the Weekend was a wonderful success, as almost 200 native plant enthusiasts enjoyed 20 hikes, 2 kids activities, a bat lecture, a campfire social, student research poster sessions, 3 speakers and a raffle.

Everything that the Kentucky Native Plant Society does is done by volunteers and Wildflower Weekend is a great example of this. This year, over 50 volunteers contributed hundreds of hours of their time to make Wildflower Weekend the success it was. To our vice president, Kendall McDonald and her planning team, the hike leaders, the speakers, the volunteers that staffed the registration desk and set up and cleaned up for the event, and the KNPS Board, I extend my personal thank you. You are an amazing group of folks.

As important as our volunteers are to the Kentucky Native Plant Society, none of our activities would happen without YOU, the members and friends of KNPS. By coming to events and supporting the Society with your dues and fees, you help with the mission of the Kentucky Native Plant Society; to promote education about, appreciation for, and conservation of our native flora. Thank you for your support.

Wildflower Weekend is the biggest event that KNPS does, but it is not the only one. The KNPS leadership team and standing committees are already planning for other activities for this year. Our Field Trips committee is planning hikes throughout the year, in locations across the Commonwealth. The Grants committee has just announced 5 grants for Pollinator Gardens (see the article about the grant winners in this month’s Lady Slipper). The Programs committee is planning the annual Fall Meeting and the Kentucky Botanical Symposium. The Plant Conservation committee is developing annual stewardship and conservation awards to be presented at the Botanical Symposium.

KNPS is already beginning the planning process for next year’s Wildflower Weekend 2026. It will be held at Natural Bridge SRP the weekend of April 17th-18th. 2026 will be the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Kentucky Native Plant Society and so Wildflower Weekend will be a celebration of the Society as well as the native plants of Kentucky. I hope to see you there.

A native of California, Jeff, his wife Liz, and their son Aaron, moved to McCracken Co., Kentucky, in 1987. After building their house on 10 acres, the family has spent the last 30+ years restoring the property from farmland to a native woodland. As a lifelong amateur naturalist, Jeff loves exploring Kentucky and learning about the rich diversity of the Commonwealth’s many ecosystems. He has been a member of the KNPS since the early 1990s and on the Board since 2017. He has been president since 2020.

Get On the 2025 Botany Blitz Map!

Each orange square is a location where Botany Blitz observations have already been made in 2025

The KNPS Wildflower Week 2025 Botany Blitz begins on Saturday, April 5th. Running through Sunday, April 13th, the Botany Blitz is an effort to document as many plant species as possible within Kentucky during the week preceding Wildflower Weekend.

This is the fifth year for our spring wildflower-focused Botany Blitz, which is hosted on the community science website iNaturalist. Using either the iNaturalist mobile app or website, participants upload photos of budding and blooming plants they observe in local parks, state parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and nature preserves across the state. Like many other plant identification apps, iNaturalist analyzes the visual information in photos and offers identification suggestions. But unlike other AI-based apps, the iNaturalist website is also a robust community of people, from new nature enthusiasts to experienced naturalists and expert biologists. The observations you make can be reviewed by the community, and the identifications you select can be confirmed or corrected by other members.

We encourage anyone interested to sign up for an iNaturalist account if you’re not already a user, and to make sure your observations get counted in this year’s blitz, join the Botany Blitz 2025 project (just click “Join” in the top right corner of the project page), and download the mobile app for iPhone or Android. Then get out and look for native plants in parks and other natural areas in your part of KY and make your observations. If you’re new to the platform, check out this helpful Getting Started guide, and browse the observations made by Botany Blitz participants in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.

Wildflower Weekend 2025 – Registration is Now Open!

Kentucky Native Plant Society’s
Wildflower Weekend 2025
Carter Caves State Resort Park
Friday, April 11th & Saturday, April 12th, 2025

The schedule is set and registration is now open for Wildflower Weekend 2025, April 11th-12th, at Carter Caves State Resort Park in Carter County. Join nature lovers, families, community scientists, amateur naturalists, and professional botanists from across the commonwealth, as we explore the beauty and diversity of Kentucky’s natural history.

Wildflower Weekend is open to the public and is family friendly. Pre-registration for the weekend is required using the form at the bottom of this page (click here to go to the form). Admission is $10 for adults, $3 for ages 13-17, and free for ages 12 & under. The schedule for the weekend is listed below.

In odd numbered years, KNPS ventures from our usual Natural Bridge SRP location and explores the biodiversity of other state parks. We are proud to host this year’s event at Carter Caves State Resort Park!

We have always tried to make Wildflower Weekend a family friendly event (kids 12 and under attend free). This year we are offering four kid-centered activities, two Cave Tours on Saturday, a “Wildflower Wander: An Exploration for Young Adventurers” on Saturday morning and then, on Saturday afternoon, the “Kid’s Nature Activity,” with fun botanical and nature activities designed for the young naturalist. See details in the schedule below. Carter Caves State Resort Park also has several playgrounds, a basketball court, gem mining and mini golf.

We are offering over 20 different hikes this year! In addition to our usual “all things botanical” hikes, we have a few hikes concentrating on birds, caves, general biodiversity, pollinators and a bat mist net educational experience.

Continue reading Wildflower Weekend 2025 – Registration is Now Open! →