 Hello there! My name is Devin Rogers and I'm a botanist with the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves. And I'm out here today at a very special place called Jeffery's Cliff in Hancock County. The Jeffery's Cliffs Conservation and Recreation Area is a 270 acre preserve in Hancock County, Kentucky that was purchased by the Kentucky Heritage Land Conservation Fund with your nature's finest license plates. The preserve is managed by Hancock County Fiscal Court and the Hancock County Heritage Commission. The preserve is located in the Shawnee Hills, a region known and defined for their exposures of Pennsylvania sandstone, which erode in plateau formations, complete with rock outcrops and glades on the cliff tops and cliff edges, cliffs and rock houses on the vertical surfaces, and bolder strewn, sheltered ravines below. The environmental factors of these landforms are very similar to those experienced in Appalachia and oftentimes serve as refugia for Appalachian disjunct species. Oh, here it is! Here it is! Halitilephium telephioides, Allegheny stone crop. Grown out here at low elevations in the Ohio River Valley on a sandstone mesa. Quite unlikely. A pretty little succulent. Fortunately it's not flowering right now. Halitilephium telephioides has a core range in central and southern Appalachians, but has outliers going west where we find it along the Ohio River Valley in Kentucky. We call this biogeographic pattern disjunct because these populations are far removed from their core range in the Appalachians. Our seersucker's edge. This is an Appalachian disjunct, which means it has a core range in the Appalachian Mountains, but here it is growing disjunct in these ravines of Hancock County. Now, here is a better view of this edge. You notice it's got these pleated leaves, which is why they call it seersucker's edge, but it is sending up its flowers and fruit right now and here's a great one growing on a sandstone boulder next to this stream. Now, the next species I wanted to highlight is called the Shawnee Hills Allomroot, Hukera Missouriensis. This plant is endemic to the Shawnee Hills of Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and then jumps several hundred miles southeast to southeastern Tennessee and northern Alabama at the southern end of the Cumberland Plateau. This allomroot is known for its pubescent leaves, white flowers in the summer, and growth conditions which are restricted to shaded cliffs, ledges, and bases of cliffs where little or no sunlight ever falls. Up until 2015, this plant at Jeffree's Cliff was considered Hukera Parvaflora, which is largely a southern Appalachian species, but researchers at Ohio State University clarified that the plants in the Shawnee Hills constitute an older species known as Hukera Missouriensis, and there is both a genetic and a morphological basis for this determination. Jeffree's Cliff's Conservation and Recreation Area is now open to the public with the network of hiking trails. For more information, please see the web links provided here. We please ask that you tread lightly, stay on trails, don't trample plants, and carry out your trash to keep this resource pristine.