When: Saturday, Sept. 12, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm CDT Where: Kenlake SRP, 542 Kenlake Rd, Hardin, KY
Elk & Bison Prairie at Land Between the Lakes
Mark your calendars and plan to meet up with other KNPS members and friends as we head west to Kenlake SRP for the Society’s 2026 Fall Meeting, on Sept 12th. Kenlake SRP is located on the shores of Kentucky Lake, just outside the small town of Aurora, KY. We will meet in the Meeting Room C, in the Kenlake Lodge. If you want to learn more about KNPS, meet other Kentucky native plant enthusiasts, and learn more about the native plants of Kentucky, then the KNPS Fall Meeting is for you!
We are still finalizing details of the Fall Meeting, but here is the schedule for the day (all times are Central Daylight Time).
10:15 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. – Breakout Session for Committees
10:45 a.m.-11:00 a.m. – Open Discussion from the Group Ask the KNPS Board questions or express thoughts and ideas you have about KNPS
11:00am – Rachel Cook, KNPS Vice President and guest speaker TBD. History of Land Between the Lakes. We will hear about the history and botanical importance of the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area.
Lunch, 12:00 noon – 1:00 p.m.
12:00 noon – Lunch is on your own. There are several nearby lunch spots including the Aurora Landing Restaurant at Kenlake SRP, Belew’s Dairy Bar (cash only), and Amazin Blaze BBQ in nearby Aurora.
Afternoon Tour – 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Devin Rodgers with Joe Pye Weed (Eutrochium)
1:00 p.m.- End – After lunch the group will carpool and caravan across the Eggner Ferry Bridge to the center of the 170,000 acre Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area (LBL). Join OKNP botanist Devin Rodgers on a tour of select roadside grassland sites in Land Between the Lakes NRA. The tour will highlight the available flowering plants, focusing on the sunflower family (Asteraceae) and rare grassland species. However, high diversity of many species in many families in these systems brings an endless variety of potential conversations with the group’s curiosity leading the discussion!
There is no fee to attend the meeting, but we are requesting that folks pre-register for the meeting using the form below.
If you have any questions, send an email to KYPlants@knps.org
Registration for Fall Meeting
There is no charge for the fall meeting, but we do ask that you register. Please fill out this registration form.
Our board is already hard at work planning Wildflower Weekend 2027 that will be taking place April 16th-18th. We had previously announced that Pine Mountain State Resort Park would be our hosts for this event. The park has informed us that they will now be undergoing renovations beginning April 1st and can no longer host our event.
Wildflower Weekend 2027 will now take place at Pennyrile Forest State Resort Park on April 16th-18th, 2027. If you are interested in helping to plan the event, please be sure to reach out to us at KYPlants@knps.org.
KNPS is taking our message of the importance and value of native plants on the road this summer. With the help of some wonderful volunteers, the Society had booths at two festivals the first weekend of August.
Volunteers from left to right: Alexandra Taylor and Viktor Halmos. Not pictured was Rachel Cook
On August 1, KNPS participated in the CRAVE Food + Music Festival in Gatton Park, in downtown Lexington. We were grouped near fellow environmental and sustainability organizations like Seedleaf, FoodChain, and Live Green Lexington. It was a great place to chat with like minded individuals and share our information with passers-by. KNPS Outreach Chair Alexandra Taylor, KNPS Vice President Rachel Cook, and KNPS member Viktor Halmos staffed the table and KNPS Volunteer Coordinator Meaghan Petix helped Alexandra with outreach material preparations.
Native plant and pollinator coloring pages created for KNPS by member Bonnie Nance.
Meaghan and Rachel helped Alexandra create a Native Plant Personality Quiz to have as an interactive piece of the tabling experience for adults. We also had plenty of coloring pages for kids. The coloring pages were created by KNPS member Bonnie Nance and show native plants with native pollinators. The group also handed out plenty of wildflower seed packets.
Overall, the event was quite successful with many people attending early in the day before the weather changed. We interacted with a few people who had heard of KNPS but many who hadn’t! We got lots of native seeds out into the hands of these folks and hope to hear back from some people who may be interested in getting more involved!
Hummingbirds of all sizes were seen during the event.
On August 1st & 2nd KNPS enjoyed being part of the 30th annual Hummingbird Festival at the Woodlands Nature Station in the Land Between the Lakes, in Trigg County. For 30 years, the Hummingbird Fest has celebrated the beauty of hummingbirds, plants, and pollinators at the Woodlands Nature Station! With as many as two hundred hummingbirds a day passing through the Nature Station’s backyard, August is a great time to see the ruby-throated hummingbird.
Woodlands Nature Station staff, scientists, local artisans, native plant sellers, other conservation organizations, and KNPS all had booths in the Nature Station’s backyard. More than 1,500 visitors, over 2 days, came through to watch hummers and butterflies and other pollinators buzzing about the native gardens, got an up-close look at the hummingbird banding station, learned how to create habitat in their own backyard, shopped for native plants and avian inspired art, and enjoyed games and crafts with the kids!
Favored with wonderful, early August weather, we enjoyed spending time with hundreds of visitors that were interested in learning about native plants in Kentucky. It was great that our table was set up next to the Ironweed Native Plant Nursery and Firefly Native Plant nursery. They had many of the plants we discussed with folks for sale in their booth. To focus our discussions, we prepared a handout, “Kentucky Native Plants to Attract and Feed Hummingbirds”. You can download a copy of the handout by clicking on the image next to this text.
Volunteers from left to right: Liz Neihoff, Phyllis Morris, Sue Lake, and Al Lake. Volunteers not pictured, Dianne Benjamin, Toni Riley, Bonnie Koblitz, Dent Morris, and Jeff Nelson
Everything that the Kentucky Native Plant Society does is done by dozens of volunteers who give hundreds of hours of their time each year to make our Society’s activities happen. This event was no exception. Our Volunteer Coordinator, Meaghan Petix, put out a call for folks to help with tabling. KNPS members, Al & Sue Lake, Dianne Benjamin, Toni Riley, Liz Neihoff, Bonnie Koblitz, Phyllis & Dent Morris, and Jeff Nelson stepped up and helped Festival visitors learn about the Kentucky Native Plant Society and its mission to promote education, preservation, and protection of our native plants and native plant communities.
Every year, we get invitations to set up a booth at conservation oriented events around Kentucky. KNPS’s new Outreach coordinator, Alexandra Taylor works with our Volunteer coordinator, Meaghan Petix to select appropriate events and locate volunteers willing to help staff the Kentucky Native Plant Society table at these events. We are already looking at two events coming up in late summer and early fall. We hope to have a table at the National Public Lands Day at Cumberland Falls SRP on Saturday, September 26 and at the Plants and Pollinators Day Native Plant Sale & Educational Event at the Train Depot in Louisville on Sunday, October 11. If you think you might be interested in helping out at either of these two events, or other events when they occur in your neighborhood, just send an email to Meaghan at Volunteers@knps.org. You can also visit the KNPS Volunteer Opportunities page to express your interest in tabling at events or other ways to help KNPS achieve its mission. If you or your organization is planning a conservation oriented event and would like KNPS to participate, please email Alexandra Taylor at Outreach@knps.org.
Do you have a native plant garden and want to share? Many of our KNPS members have brought their love of native plants to their home gardens. It is so wonderful to experience how pollinators and wildlife interact with natives from the comfort of our homes. Even more so, it can be an invaluable learning experience to see species from when they emerge in the spring through the fall.
We are often asked what species are best for garden settings. The KNPS Outreach and Social Media committees are interested in your gardens! If you would like to have KNPS share pictures of your garden, please email 2-5 photos with your name, where in the state your garden is located, and any other information you would like to share to Outreach@knps.org
Here are some example photos from board member Heidi Braunreiter’s amazing garden in central Kentucky.
Kentucky Native Plant Society is pleased to announce the recipients of 2026 Pollinator Garden Grants. These grants will help the recipients purchase native pollinator plants, seeds or both to set up a pollinator garden. These gardens will allow various audiences the opportunity to see native pollinator plants and the pollinators they serve. Hopefully visitors to the gardens will be inspired to install a pollinator garden of their own or incorporate some native pollinator plants into home landscapes.
The 2026 Pollinator Garden Grant recipients are, in no particular order,
Debbie Brown, Good Shepherd Catholic School Frankfort, KY 40601
Richard Olson, Sustainable Berea Berea KY 40403
Charlie Combs, Louisville Nature Center Louisville, KY
Christine Argus, Lake View Park Sponsored by Franklin County Solid Waste Frankfort, KY 40601
Mary Jewell, New Haven Head Start New Haven, KY 40051
KNPS will be announcing the pollinator garden grant application period in the spring. Watch the KNPS newsletter, The Lady’s-slipper for details.
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 2011, Tara Littlefield discusses the rare Kentucky shrub, sweet fern (Comptonia peregrina) . This article ran in Vol. 26, No. 1. 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. 40, 2025, can be found.
Sweet fern—A rare Kentucky shrub with an interesting history
By Tara Littlefield, Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves
Comptonia peregrina, OKNP file photo
The wax myrtle or bayberry family (Myricaceae) is known for its odor. These plants have resinous dots on their leaves, making their leaves aromatic. Plants in this family have a wide distribution, including Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America, missing only from Australasia. Myricaceae members are mostly shrubs to small trees and often grow in xeric or swampy acidic soils. More familiar members of the wax myrtle family include many in the Genus Myrica (sweet gale, wax myrtle), some of which are used as ornamentals and are economically important. In addition, the wax coating on the fruit of several species of Myrica, has been used traditionally to make candles.
So what does this interesting family have in common with Kentucky’s flora? We are lucky to have just one species in the wax myrtle family, Sweet fern (Comptonia peregrina). In addition, it is also a monotypic genus restricted to eastern North America. This means that the genus Comptonia has only one species (C. peregrina) worldwide, and just happens to be found here in KY! Of course the common name sweet fern is misleading. This woody shrub is certainly not a fern. However, the leaves have a similar shape to pinnules of a fern frond (leaf). But having sweet in the common name is no mistake. If you crush the leaves throughout the growing season, a lovely smell is emitted as the essential oils volatilize into the air.
Female flowers (short round catkins with reddish bracts) and male flowers (elongated catkins clustered at the branch tips) – www.nativehaunts.comphenology.html
Sweet fern is a clonal shrub that grows up to one meter high and spreads through rhizomes. The leaves are alternate and simple, linear and coarsely irregularly toothed, dark green above and a bit paler below. It is monoecious (meaning male and female flowers on different plants). The female flowers are not showy— short rounded catkins [dense cluster of apetalous flowers, usually associated with oaks, birches and willows] with reddish bracts. The male flowers are elongated yellow-green catkins clustered at the branch tips, the pollen being adapted to wind dispersal. The fruit is a round, bur-like cluster of ovoid nutlets that turn brown when mature in late summer. The bark is reddish and highly lenticeled (small corky pores or narrow lines on the bark that allow for gas exchange).
While very common in the northern part of its range (northeastern United States and Canada), sweet fern is state listed endangered in Kentucky, along with being state listed as rare in Ohio, Tennessee, South Carolina, West Virginia, Georgia, and North Carolina. The populations of sweet fern in the southern part of its range are isolated and disjunct from the common habitats up north. There seems to be a close association of these remnant populations with the Appalachian Mountains, which suggests that the populations in the southern ranges remained in protected “refugia” during periods of great plant migrations, such as during glaciations.
Sweet fern is typically found in openings in coniferous forests with well drained dry, acidic sandy or gravely soils with periodic disturbances. In the north, it can be found in pine-oak barrens or jack pine and spruce forests that are maintained by fire, creating openings and decreasing competition. It has also been noted to colonize road banks and even highly disturbed soils such as mined areas. Contrary to these open coniferous habitats with periodic fire, the remnant populations of sweet fern in Kentucky and Tennessee are found on sandstone cobble bars, which are maintained by annual floods. Despite being found on habitats that are maintained by different disturbance regimes, these two communities share a few things in common—they are both dry, acidic, sandy and nutrient poor. Disturbances are a natural occurring impact in these communities that removes shrubs and saplings, thus decreasing competition so that sweet fern can thrive.
Sweet fern has adapted to these specialized habitats. It is a fires adapted species; it will resprout after a fire and increase its clonal sprouts through underground rhizomes. It is also a xerophyte, a plant adapted to dry conditions. And since it is adapted to living in nutrient poor, acidic soils, it has evolved with the bacteria Frankia that fixes nitrogen, somewhat like the more famous nitrogen fixing legumes who have partnered with the bacteria Rhizobium. Did you know that there are over 160 species of nonleguminous plants that fix nitrogen? It is also the host of the sweet fern blister rust (Cronartium comptoniae) which reduces the growth of pines, particularly Jack pine. What interesting relationships this shrub has with bacteria and fungi! In addition, sweet fern is the food plant to larvae of many species of Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies). These include the Io moth (Automeris io), and several Coleophora case-bearers (some of which are found exclusively on sweet fern).
But perhaps the most fascinating facts about the rare shrub sweet fern is what it can tell us about the evolution of plants, the history of the earth, and the paleovegetational past of Kentucky. Geologically speaking, sweet fern is an old plant. In Kentucky, it was most likely more common some 20,000 years ago during the last glaciation, as Kentucky used to look like Canada. Analysis of pollen in sediment cores taken from natural ponds in Kentucky confirms this, spruce and jack pine was common in the uplands in the bluegrass. Sometimes it is difficult to think of plants migrating north and south in order to adapt to a changing climate. But what is even more mind blowing is that the genus Comptonia is perhaps millions of years old. Numerous fossils of dozens of extinct species of Comptonia have been found all across the Northern hemisphere, and the earliest of the fossils have been dated back to the Cretaceous period (the age of the Dinosaurs) over 65 million years ago. The first flowering plants (angiosperms) evolved only 135 million years ago, so Comptonia is one of the oldest living plants in the world—a true living fossil!
So when April comes around, and all of the spring wildflowers are emerging, think of sweet fern tucked deep into the gorges of Big South Fork and Rockcastle, its catkins releasing pollen in the wind, using the nitrogen fixed from its bacterial friends, withstanding the massive floods of two of Kentucky’s last wild rivers. And if you use your imagination, you may be able to see dinosaurs and tree ferns in the distance.
Berry, Edward W. 1906. Living and Fossil Species of Comptonia. The American Naturalist. Vol. 40, No. 475, pp. 485-524.
Darlington, Emlen. 1948. Notes on some North American Lepidoptera reared on Sweet Fern (Compontia asplenifolia Linnaeus) with Description of new species. Transactions of the American Entomological Society (1890-). Vol. 74, No. ¾, pp. 173-185.
Liag, X., Wilde, V., Ferguon, D., Kvacek, Z, Ablaev, A., Wang, Y., and Li, C. 2010. Comptonia naumannii
(Myricaceae) from the early Miocene of Weichang, China, and the paleobiogeographical implication of the genus. Review of Paleobotany and Palynology. Vol. 163, p. 52-63.
Medley, Max and Eugene Wofford. 1980. Thuja occidentalis L. and other noteworthy collections from the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River in McCreary County, Kentucky. Castanea. Vol. 45, No. 3, pp. 213-215.
Natureserve Explorer, 2010.
Wilkins, Gary, Delcourt, Paul, Delcourt, Hazel, Harrison, Frederick, and Turner, Manson. 1991. Paleoecology of central Kentucky since the last glacial maximum. Quaternary Research. Vol. 36, Issue 2.
Virginia Tech Woody Database https://dendro.cnre.vt.edu/dendrology/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=869
Zomlefer, W. 1994. Guide to Flowering Plant Families. University of NC Press, Chapel Hill.
“Coming together to discuss current botanical projects, conservation, and collaboration in Kentucky and beyond”
On Wednesday, January 14, 2026, the Kentucky Native Plant Society and the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves held our 5th annual, virtual, Botanical Symposium. Close to 200 folks were able to attend online to hear and see several presentations about our native plants and plant communities. We know that there are many who would have liked to participate, but were not able to do so. Below are videos of all of the presentations.
KNPS Updates, Jeff Nelson KNPS Immediate Past President
Length: 11:16
Curators Corner, a round of updates from Kentucky’s major herbarium curators
Length: 30:57
State of Kentucky Plant Conservation, Tara Littlefield, Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves
