Kentucky Botanical Symposium 2020 (Virtual)

Kentucky Botanical Symposium and Membership Meeting

KNPS is having a virtual botanical symposium on Thursday, December 10th from 10am-2pm EST. For several years, KNPS has organized a botanical symposium in the fall with a goal of bringing together professionals, citizen scientists, academics, gardeners and students in order to learn about what’s going on in the world of Kentucky Botany. Despite the pandemic year, we thought it was important to continue this event, so please navigate this virtual world and join us to learn about all things botanical in Kentucky.

Topics that will be covered will include, but will not be limited to, KNPS updates, an overview of plant conservation in Kentucky, Kentucky’s roadside grassland and pollinator habitat program, conservation horticulture and native plant propagation, monitoring and managing rare plants and communities on State Nature Preserves, and exciting new Kentucky botanical discoveries.

Agenda

  • 10:00-10:10 Welcome & Introduction
  • 10:10-10:40 State of KY Plant Conservation and KNPS updates
    Jen Koslow, Tara Littlefield, Jeff Nelson, Susan Harkins and David Taylor
  • 10:40-11:05 Inventory, Monitoring and Management of rare plants and communities in State Nature preserves and Natural areas
    Devin Rodgers (Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves)
  • 11:05-11:10 Break
  • 11:10-11:35 Roadside Native Plants Project
    Tony Romano (Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves) and panel
  • 11:35-12:00 Native Plant Propagation Projects
    Emily Ellingson (UK Arboretum), Heidi Braunreiter (Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves)
  • 12:00-12:30 Lunch Break
  • 12:30-1:30 Keynote Speaker, Dr. Alan Weakley
  • 1:30-1:55 Exciting Kentucky Botanical Discoveries
    Mason Brock (Southeastern Grasslands Initiative/Austin Peay State University), Tara Littlefield (Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves)
  • 1:55-2:00 Wrap-up

Keynote Speaker

We could not be more excited about our Keynote speaker Dr. Alan Weakley!   Alan is a plant taxonomist and ecologist whose work in taxonomy and plant conservation has sparked a renaissance of botany in the southeast.  Just after lunch, Alan will address Kentucky’s Botanical Community on interesting topics ranging from plant evolution and biogeography, to conservation, taxonomy and citizen science. 

Alan Weakley, plant taxonomist, community ecologist and conservationist.

Alan Weakley is a plant taxonomist, community ecologist, and conservationist specializing in the Southeastern United States. He holds a B.A. from UNC-Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. from Duke University.  He has worked as botanist and ecologist for the N.C. Natural Heritage Program, and as regional and chief ecologist for The Nature Conservancy and NatureServe. He is currently Director of the UNC Herbarium, a department of the N.C. Botanical Garden, and teaches as adjunct faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill and at the Highlands Biological Station. 

Alan is author of the Flora of the Southeastern United States, and co-author (with Chris Ludwig and Johnny Townsend) of the Flora of Virginia, which has received five awards, including the Thomas Jefferson Award for Conservation. He is also co-author (along with Laura Cotterman and Damon Waitt) of Wildflowers of the Atlantic Southeast.

The Flora of the Southeastern United States is an open access, downloadable flora with over 10,000 species. See the article about this important research here: Flora of the Southeastern United States – 2020 Edition

He has also released an app, FloraQuest, co-developed with Michael Lee and Rudy Nash, covering the Southeastern United States flora. He has authored over 100 journal articles and book chapters, and is in high demand as a speaker on plant taxonomy, community classification and mapping, biogeography, and biodiversity conservation. He is active with the Flora of North America project and the United States National Vegetation Classification, serves as an advisor to the N.C. Natural Heritage Program and N.C. Plant Conservation Program, and is a co-founder of the Carolina Vegetation Survey. As a trustee and board member of public and private conservation granting agencies and foundations, he has helped oversee $400,000,000 of land conservation grants in the Southeastern United States.

Plant Family Identification Workshop

WORKSHOP HAS BEEN CANCELLED

Plant Family Identification Motifs:
patterns for simplifying the complexity

Instructor: Dr. Richard Abbott*

When: Saturday, March 21, 2020
Time:  9am-4pm Eastern Time
Where:  Bernheim Arboretum & Forest, meet at the Garden Pavilion
Cost:  $25 /$10 for students
Bring your own lunch, and wear hiking shoes

Using minimal basic vocabulary, approximately 30 plant families, and half a dozen artificial motifs, we will focus on plant identification patterns.  Learning Kentucky plants within a global framework not only empowers confidence in knowing what you know, but enables identifying more than 130,000 plants to family globally and provides a solid foundation for incorporating other family patterns.  Essentially, this workshop is an introduction to a way of thinking about how to organize botanical knowledge in a practical, applied way.

*About the Instructor

Dr. J. Richard Abbott, Assistant Professor of Biology, is the current Curator of the University of Arkansas Monticello Herbarium. At UAM, he teaches General Botany, Regional Flora, and Plants in Our World and conducts floristic, systematic, and taxonomic research, especially with the milkwort family (Polygalaceae). He received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Biology and German from Berea College in Kentucky and both M.S. degree and Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Florida in Gainesville. His primary passion is teaching plant identification, using the local flora to understand global patterns. To that end, he is currently working to establish a living teaching collection on the UAM campus, with the ultimate goal of cultivating as many families and genera as possible.

Workshops are opened to KNPS members for registration 2 weeks before they are opened to the general public. This session has been filled by KNPS members. If you are interested in this workshop you can sign up on the waiting list below. If an opening occurs the first person on the waiting list will be contacted If there is significant interest in the workshop we will try to schedule another session as soon as possible and the people on the waiting list will be the first contacted about the new session.

Sedge Workshop

Sedge Identification and Diversity
(Carex, Cyperaceae)

Many of the grass-like plants one may encounter in our natural areas in Kentucky are not actually grasses. Although similar, they are members of an entirely different family of plants; the sedge family (Cyperaceae)

Instructor: Rob Naczi*

When: May 21-22, 2019 (Tuesday/Wednesday)
Time:  9am-5pm Eastern Time
Where:  Richmond area, Eastern Kentucky University and nearby natural areas, exact details TBA
Cost:  $75

THIS WORKSHOP HAS FINISHED

Many of the grass-like plants one may encounter in our natural areas in Kentucky are not actually grasses. Although similar, they are members of an entirely different family of plants. This workshop will focus on the largest genus within the sedge family (Cyperaceae), the genus Carex. With close to 150 species in this genus found in Kentucky, the diversity of sedges (Carex) is astounding and they can tell us a lot about the natural communities upon which they are found. Rob Naczi, curator of the New York Botanical garden and North America’s Carex expert, will teach us about sedge diversity and how to identify this notoriously difficult group. 

*About the Instructor

Robert F. C. Naczi, PhD
Arthur J. Cronquist Curator of North American Botany, The New York Botanical Garden

http://www.nybg.org/science/scientist_profile.php?id_scientist=105
http://sweetgum.nybg.org/northeastflora/index.php
rnaczi@nybg.or

Rob Naczi

Robert Naczi is a plant systematist whose research focuses on the flora of North America, plant conservation, sedges (Cyperaceae), and Western Hemisphere Pitcher Plants (Sarraceniaceae). Naczi uses a multi-pronged approach in his research, utilizing field, herbarium, and laboratory methods. His fieldwork has given him first-hand knowledge of the plant life of much of North America. He and collaborators are writing a comprehensive account of the Northeast’s spontaneous plants, New Manual of Vascular Plants of Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada. He is lead editor of Sedges: Uses, Diversity, and Systematics of the Cyperaceae (2008). Also, he co-authored Mistaken Identity? Invasive Plants and their Native Look-alikes: An identification guide for the Mid-Atlantic (2008). For 35 years, he has studied the taxonomy, phylogeny, and ecology of Carex. Carex is the largest genus of flowering plants in North America (500 species) and in most temperate regions of the world (2000 species total). Naczi earned the B.S. in Biology from St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, and the Ph.D. in Botany from University of Michigan.