 each of the clover sections and it kind of goes this is kind of my way of thinking when I approach these different plant conservation projects, you know, trying to assess needs and status and things like that. But, you know, we'll start with okay what's the status of, of, you know, that particular clover in the state. What are the conservation measures with protection. And with protection and acquisition and management. What is the research life history management needs genetics, and we're increasingly trying to work on seed banking propagation introductions and additional restoration measures with partners and that's, that's a big part of why we're calling this meeting is to pull in all of those other areas that have those types of expertise. So real quick, I know a lot of you all are familiar with the affiliate the Kentucky State Nature Preserve Commission, which the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves used to be called. Real quick, I wanted to give a little background of some of the changes at Kentucky Nature Preserves that has taken place over the past few years just to kind of give you all a background of the different programs that we work on with with the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves. So I know there's usually a lag of time when I switch to different slides, you guys see the next slide. Already. Okay. Yes. Okay, so I'm office of Kentucky Nature Preserves so we're a state organization under the energy environment cabinet with an overarching mission of protecting Kentucky's natural heritage. And we take this pretty seriously. Like many state organizations we administer various programs that are all tied to statutes mandated by law. So our plant conservation section, which was recently formed in 2019. We primarily work on monitoring management inventory programs were responsible for implementing the rare plant recognition act so you can see this highlighted. One of the highlighted duties of the Office of Nature Reserves is to recognize conserve and restore rare and endangered plants, and that comes from our rare plant recognition act. There's lots of other different programs that we work on with the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves. So we're also the state cooperators for federally listed and at risk plants, and we are coordinating the plant conservation Alliance projects for the state. But there are many other programs that nature reserves that we work on, since our plant conservation, since our plant conservation projects are integrated into our natural areas program or natural heritage program, or heritage land programs and our wild rivers program so I'll give you guys a little bit background on those different programs. Okay. So, I know this is, you know, information that some of you all know but it can't hurt to reiterate. We are the states natural area program for the state we manage a system of state nature reserves that contain some of the best remaining examples of the states natural communities and species. Every of the states across the country have natural areas programs, and many states work together through an umbrella nonprofit called the natural areas association. So, that group aims to bring together natural areas professionals to gather to support and communicate best monitoring and management practices for our natural areas. We do a lot of prescribed burns and invasive species management's invasive species management on our nature reserves. So, all together you see this map. We're involved with over 120,000 acres across the state. That has been conserved either through the work that we do or the work of our partners through our heritage program. So in addition to our state nature preserve system we run the heritage land acquisition program. So our HLCF program is the state's acquisition program for conservation lands and we work with a lot of partners through that program, purchasing state conservation lands partners like division of forestry Kentucky Fish and Wildlife State Parks County governments and nonprofits. So the majority of conservation lands in the state have been purchased through this program since since 94. So it's a really important program for for purchasing key conservation tracks. So through this program, the plant folks in our section work on inventory of plants and communities in these managed areas and then of course all the long term monitoring and recovery of their plants. And these manage areas and also on private lands. So our unofficial goal with the natural program is to have every species known from Kentucky protected through this system. And we made some strides but we have a long way to go. Okay so we're the heritage program for the state as well the natural heritage program. We house the rare species and community data for the state and we work with regional partners like nature serve on assessing conservation ranks and distribution of species throughout the state and region. We work with the Southeast partners and plant conservation alliances on on ranking and in assessing conservation ranks as well as well as as state partners on those efforts so we try to map, you know through mapping consistent and analyzing researching, we can better understand the biodiversity of the state and its status. So we work a lot on data basing biological or data collection methodologies, standardizing the data that we collect. We have more recently we now have an online tool called the Kentucky biological assessment tool that you see here. And this is a online. I'll show you this. It's an online assessment tool to self service conservation planning tool that allows customers to submit projects and receive data within minutes so we work on on on data exchanges directly with with partners as well. But this is a great tool for you to get to get online and get get data on on some of these rare species and communities. So, so one last slide before we delve right into the clover talk. We work a lot with the Kentucky native plant society, several of our staff volunteer in various capacities like leading field trips, organizing events and networking. We work closely with the native plant society on conservation Alliance projects, particularly an outreach volunteer building and community building. So, the plant conservation Alliance is a new initiative that brings together all these different groups from public to private to work on different conservation projects. And our plant conservation staff and myself helped to coordinate some of these things. And through native plant society you know we've been holding some some volunteer days and and and trying to increase, you know, volunteers and and community building but we've also been trying to to create different grant opportunities for students and also just partners to also work on some of these projects. So, back to clovers. Before I go into the details of the Kentucky clover and then pass it off to some of the other facilitators. I will add some of the previous work done by clover researchers, many whom I have learned a lot from over the years. So, nature preserves has been serving and monitoring clovers particularly running buffalo clover for for many decades and, and our former botanist and ecologist Mark Evans had rediscovered running buffalo clover. In the 80s and staff from nature preserves has been involved in monitoring and management of clovers for for many decades. But I also wanted to highlight the work of Julian Campbell, who over the years has compiled a tremendous amount of literature on the ecology of bluegrass woodland communities and the various rare species within them. And on his website, he's got a lot of great essays and write ups on various aspects of ecology of the bluegrass woodlands. I've got a clip of some of the links to his website so definitely wanted to acknowledge Julian. Daniel Boone, who has discovered make many great clover populations and always provides great insight into the life history of clovers. And then Norman Taylor. I know Jonathan will probably mention Norman, when he talks about seed banking and in propagation, but he was a UK professor. That was instrumental in seed banking all of our native clovers and clovers across the world. So, I was lucky to meet Norman a few times before he passed away in 2010. I remember visiting him and meeting him for the first time at UK to get seed running buffalo clover seed from his clover bank for a propagation study. I did in 2006 so really appreciate all the work of all of the clover researchers in the past. So we have free native clovers in the state, and we're going to be going over the current projects of those will start with Kentucky clovers since that's our rarest clover. It's a globally rare plant G one. It's not federally listed, and is trending towards extinction so that's kind of why we have it up kind of front and center to talk about some of the conservation measures that we are working on for that. So just a quick background it was discovered in 2010 by Joe Wasefield in Woodford County and then described by Dr. Vincent and Chapel in 2014 and Dr. Vincent and Chapel described it through the measurements that were made by four specimens of two populations that are in the state. So it's it's it's most closely related to reflexum and there's some, you know, characters with the pedial and peduncle link that separates it from reflexum. It's got dry rocky south facing woods or it's habitat and then the under stories got this interesting kind of the trophic music herbaceous layer that little talk about in just a second. And like all the clovers it's associated with deer animal trails and grazing and it's an annual or biennial. Those are things that we're still trying to completely figure out. So the current status. There are two eos were element occurrences populations that were that were that were that are known. The first one I mentioned in 2010 that Joe discovered in Woodford County. It was a D rank when it was first found there was 25 plants, and it has not been seen since 2010 at that site we go every year. It's kind of a tradition at this point that site has a long cattle grazing history. It's a little bit flatter and in the community is a little more degraded. So the second site that was discovered in 2012 by myself was in Franklin County, and that was a smaller population that was also a D rank site. I think there was less than a dozen plants there. And a small population has existed there. Over the since it was discovered so all in that communities is much higher quality. So every year we go to the Woodford County population. It's usually just Joe and I, sometimes other folks join in and search for the Kentucky clover that we have not seen there since 2010. It's degraded a lot over time, but the Franklin County site, a little bit nicer. So we've been able over the past. I guess it's been this will be the ninth year where we take population data. So you see here in 2012. Oh, actually there was only six plants and 21 flowers in 2013 2014. Nothing 2015 seedlings show up 2016. You get adults so you see this pattern that that looks kind of like a, you know, a biennial pattern of this plant. There's there's usually at least from the two cycles that we've documented so far, these, you know, it takes a year or two off before before the seed germinates again, and the cycle continues with seedling to adults flowering and then back again. So, this is kind of the life history data that we've got. There's not, not, we don't have much to work with, with, with, you know, sites in, in, in, in these natural areas, you know, just a few plants so we're taking data as best we can with what we've got. So a little bit more information on the Woodford County site in terms of associated communities and as in species, the Woodford County site is a lower quality woodland. The habitat is fairly, you know, common in the bluegrass so the habitat didn't really strike us necessarily as something unique. You know degraded, long cattle grazing history, a little flatter, lots of invasive species. We've compiled species lists. I've, you know, worked with Julian and Dan when we go visit these sites to, to, you know, collect specimens and create our species lists. And so we have a species list from that site but you know I wish we would have put out quantitative characterization plots on this site a long time ago. I've anecdotally have watched it really degrade significantly over the past 10 years. I think a lot of that has to do with the, the, the ash decline, opening canopy, making the invasive species even worse, intense grazing at various times. So, so that's, so that's the Woodford County population. And then we've got the Franklin County population. So this site is much more, it's got, it's very diverse. It's, it's very, very unique for the bluegrass. It was found in 2012. It's a little bit steeper grade. Again, it's more of a south kind of rocky south facing slope dominated by chinkabins and blue ash and cedar so a woodland kind of structure and then the understory is really rich herbaceous layer so it's a terrific music species so there's lots of conservative species at this site and it also contains a population of globe bladder pod, which is a feather listed species so when I found this population in 2012 I was actually looking for low bladder pod populations so I'll take a undescribed species. While while doing that while doing those surveys so so yeah I was actually looking for something else which that often happens with with biologists when they're looking for something else they usually stumble into, you know, different and different things so globe bladder pod, Kentucky clover, there's another state endangered plant here called Eastern Yampa Peridoridia. There's lots of just more conservative regionally rare plants that occur here, you see some of these photos. There's a castrum. Strathium. It's just, it's a beautiful site. When you go there in April it's covered in in bear grass, comassia, really rich spring spring flora so it's a beautiful site so we're planning this year since this also is a globe bladder pod site. We're setting up quantitative monitoring for globe bladder pod and we're, we're doing more quantitative characterization plots here. And I know Will had mentioned FQA, you know, we've, we've been putting out these CVS vegetation plots on a lot of our nature preserves and, and we plan on doing that here we've got good species list but they're not in a defined quantitative area. But even though the site is really high quality it's, it's, it's really degraded a lot over the past decade because of bush honeysuckle. So both of these sites are private. And we have worked with the landowners to, you know, educate them on the, on these resources and how important they are trying to do purchasing of, you know, properties or conservation easements so far. We haven't gotten too far but we do have permission to go to these properties and study the population so, so that's where we're at there. So, some additional site conservation measures. I mentioned both of these populations are private. So, you see here on this Google Earth map. And this kind of right here near Keen is the Woodford County population. And then up here on the top part is the Franklin County population. And that's about a 15 mile distance as the crew flies between the two populations. They're both known from tributaries of the Kentucky River. You can see here Lexington. Lots of ag land, besides for the ravines and the trips in the Kentucky River. So, we're continually trying to, to do some additional conservation measures at these sites like at the Woodford County site. We've worked with the landowner to, you know, change the grazing patterns. We have recently last year Joe and I put out some, some, some fencing to kind of keep the cattle out of the area so that we can try to see if the clover is still there the problem is, every time we go there every year, the plants seem to be grazed. Trying to, trying to work out some of those issues the Franklin County site. We've been doing some bush honeysuckle removal the past couple years and we need a lot more work with that. So, searching for new populations last year. We got a small grant from US Fish and Wildlife Service to look for new populations and so our target area was areas around the known populations. We surveyed many different sites. There was so much honeysuckle in this area so we did not find anything else, even of quality at all within this area. And we're going to continue with that project this year, looking for new populations. We have a need for additional life history studies. But like I said, we just don't have much to work with in these natural areas because the populations are either gone or just so small. And we have a need for more monitoring and management but again, population is so small. So, in addition to the, the phenotypic description of this plants by Dr. Vincent. It's a really rare plant. We think it is trending towards. We think it is trending. I mean it's a likely candidate of federal listing. And so we wanted to get more research on this plant. So we feel really good if we recommend this for federal listing. So we worked with Dr. Rufal, who is heading a genetic project for Clover and I will stop my screen share and pass this off to Brad to give us an update on the genetics, the genetic project for Kentucky Clover. All right. Can everybody hear me and see the slide I've got here. Yes. All right, it's nice to see everyone I haven't seen everyone and several of you that I know in a long time I used to be at EKU and two years ago moved up here to the University of Michigan. So I just tried to put everything on one slide. I'll just, I think I've got five minutes right is what you want me to try to keep this too so I'll try to be quick. And just warn me if I need to stop talking. So, Tara and I several years ago now. They're kind of found a grant that we could apply to and from the Kentucky Waterways Alliance and we also had some funding from EKU to try to place. We're in Kentucky NC in a tree, and really Nick who's going to be able to join us in maybe another half hour or so here he's in class now he's done a lot of the work on this. Particularly all the lab work. So we're hoping to submit this to Castania, you know within the next month or so. Everything's pretty much done we just need to work on the paper. One is that Jacqueline Vincent described this in 2013. There was a really good trifolium phylogeny produced by Ellison at all in 2006 but of course we didn't know about Kentucky NC then so it wasn't included. And morphology suggests that trifolium Kentucky NC is most closely related to trifolium reflexum, but morphology isn't always correct so it could be more closely related to some other species and we wanted to determine that with molecular evidence. So we basically put together a phylogenetic tree using three non coding regions. So these are regions of DNA that don't code for proteins there tend to be more variable. So there's no doubt still not quite variable enough, but we have one marker from the nuclear genome and two markers from the plastic or chloroplasts genome. In the Ellison study they used it s and t r n l, but t r n l is really pretty poor marker. And so there was a paper by Shaw at all. And so we wrote a small grant and just said hey we're going to sample this suite of species and we're going to add NDHA to an already existing data set from Ellison at all. And so Nick, in particular, sampled new data from three of these genes and including one representative each of the trifolium Kentucky NC population, one from each population. And as well as. Yeah, so that the results basically what did we found out well, these are all out groups here that aren't really relevant to what we're concerned about. So we do find a strongly supported clade of eastern native North American trifolium species so stolen the firm virginicum calcarecum flexing Kentucky NC, but hurry and seeing Carrie linear. So they're a nice clade strongly supported. They seem to be perennials. So these are perennials and then the annuals are bright biannuals are strongly supported clade. And trifolium Kentucky NC is in this annual biannual clade. And, but relationships among these four species reflects them Kentucky NC Baharians in Carolinianum, these molecular markers are unable to really tell practically the difference between any of them. And I believe that the support values, even for holding the two Kentucky NC species together are very low that's like getting a 50% on a test right, you wouldn't trust somebody if they took a test and they got a 50%. So basically any number of relationships between these species are are possible with this data, not to say if you didn't get more data that wouldn't be clear more clear. So on the, on the left side here you just see sort of these branch lengths are relatively meaningless, but on the right is a mirror image of this tree, and branch lengths they represent the longer they are the more of a difference there is. And you can see among these annual species the branch lengths are practically near zero. So there's really no genetic difference in these three, mind you, in the three markers that we looked at between the species in this annual clade. So, while morphologically, it may be most similar molecularly the verdict is still out what species within these annual biannual species, try following Kentucky NC is most closely related to. So let's gather more data, and this will change and I would, I actually wouldn't do more single gene sequencing like this, I would do sort of full genome sequencing because it's just going to be cheaper, easier way more data. So I wouldn't, for example, use these markers to look at other specimens from Tennessee or or the EKU collection to see if they're Kentucky NC or not, you need more data. So that's the gist of what I've got. So I can try to leave this up or should I unshare. I'm unsure for right now. We'll make that available to anyone that that would like to look at that more in a minute. All right so the jury's still out with genetics. Thank you, Brad we need more data. And then Mason Brock. Julian, Devin, and I have been looking at CERNAC online. Oops, you guys see this. So there's historic populations. And I think that that, that that I'll give a good chunk of that credit to Mason found that Tennessee population in a historic pop in a historic specimen at UT and then there's also one at New York Botanical Garden, or New York or barium, I believe, but they're historic specimens and they do appear to possibly be Kentucky NC. So, yeah, like, like, like Brad said, the genetic study we really don't have too many populations to sample from, and we really need to increase sample size. But the, the new revelation of Kentucky NC reflects some in the inner blue grass and natural basin is kind of huge. Maybe the species is in Tennessee. So looking into sampling these specimens and doing DNA extractions and, and Dr. Melanie link Perez at EKU has the specimens that were from Berea and at UT at EKU now, and she's skilled with this DNA extraction of of specimens so we're looking forward to, to working with her and, and, and you all and different folks on on trying to piece this puzzle together, get more samples for this genetic study. See if, if maybe, you know, we need to also be expanding our, our search in central in the in the natural basin around Nashville. So that's, that's pretty huge. And I know years ago Mason Brock. When we were really excited for, you know, Kentuckians are really excited to have a new endemic species for the state. Mason kept saying, I know that, you know, it probably follows similar biogeographic patterns of other rare, rare plants that are in the inner national or in the inner blue grass and national basin. And so he turned out to be right. So, Julian has his hand raised I'll get to you in just one second Julian. I'm going to test this off to Jonathan are, are seed banking and propagation specialist here. Let's see stop share. So, we've been working with, you know, this plant is, is it's trending towards extinction so we're trying to frantically seed bank it, you know, figure out how to propagate this thing, working on augmentations introductions, and partnering with Cincinnati zoo US Fish and Wildlife and Jonathan Cubesh to to work on on on some of these, these issues. So Jonathan, I will pass it over to you to give an update on seed banking and propagation and then if you could call on Julian and Valerie to give an update on propagation as well. My pleasure and shoot, what an honor. So, I guess it's been alluded to, but Norm Taylor at the University of Kentucky had a goal of trying to collect all of the Clover species the genus Trifolium globally, and he had been working at this since the 50s collecting across the planet. Probably some of the best collections that we have seen of species even during the Cold War. So, we got pretty lucky that Kentucky has Trifolium because the man, the man wanted Clover. The interesting thing in terms of clovers for seed banking and such as number one they're close enough to an agronomic species that somebody's going to take the effort to seed bank them and number two. In terms of seed banking. Our native clovers here in Kentucky are some of the best represented of wild species through the USDA seed bank system. So, I mean just kind of practicing with that we got very lucky that a lot of our native clovers have that one time or another, at least been seed banked one way or the other, mainly by norm. And now for Kentucky NC. I do have good news, and I'm going to share my screen to show you but we do actually have a seed bank event from Kentucky NC. And this is the USDA's national plant germ plasm system. If you're a research scientist you can come on here and request seed, and they'll generally give it to you unless you get them really angry. I've made some folks out in Washington State very angry at points because they can I have dot dot dot. That'd be nice. But this is PI 687281. Trifolium reflects them. No, this is actually Kentucky NC. It says it's from Jessamine County. It's actually from Woodford County. There's a little bit of snooping with Brad Morris down at Griffin Georgia, their research station there confirmed that this is a collection from the Woodford County Kentucky NC site. Why is it mislabeled, we hadn't given it species status yet. Why are the collection notes kind of off just because the site so close to the county line. They have so many missing details compared to, you know, what you would expect for a lot of these species norm died shortly after collecting the seed. So at the USDA level, I have repeatedly bugged them before the pandemic they were supposed to do a seed increase 2021. They have 506 seeds. They're very good at telling you how many they have 506 exactly. That has been pushed to 2022. I have tried to request that they update the species designation and try and update some of these notes. Very quickly for those of you who are interested in requesting seed. This is the USDA is label over here for seed accessions but this is more useful for our purposes. This is how normal label labeled his clovers so everything follows species number 34 collection number 20. So, it took me asking a whole bunch of his students to eventually crack the code on this. So the seed banking propagation side there's a lot of secret tricks that nobody tells you, like we figured out five ways to propagate stolen if from. But yeah we've got an official collection here. And then Julian Campbell's really been leading the way with the proliferation of the species and research. I have received seed will overbeck got seed at one point. Terry has had seed. Dr Vincent has had seed previously and Valerie Pence Cincinnati zoo has had seed. In terms of those collections there hasn't really been a curious how many seeds that we have here's how many standing plants there's never really been kind of keeping any kind of tracking on that across research groups. But the general assumption is that we have this undefined quantity of at least 500 seeds outside of the habitat. So compared to in 2019 there was one plant known in the wild to this 500 seeds pretty good news. I recently started a batch of seed here at Virginia tech. And we're keeping track of that. I mean that's kind of the, that's kind of the big the big gist right now. The real goal of just kind of doing an inventory of what we've got trying to correct the official seed bank entry with the USDA which has been uphill, and then I guess trying to get more seat going trying to standardize propagation. So that's what I'm supposed to call on Julian and then go to Dr pants. So I'm going to turn it over to Julian and go from there. Can you hear me. Yes. Okay just real quick. I mean growing the Kentucky NC much in recent years I did grow it at first for two or three years and increase the seed a little bit and gave some to terror, etc. But my main interested the recently has been like Mason discovered those collections in the have area from Tennessee. Before COVID in March I was in New York in the botanical garden and I found a reflection under reflexum. There is another Gattinger collection at New York herbarium from central Tennessee the same period as what Mason found so I just wonder if and there is seed in these old collections is it possible. There could be viable seed in those plants collected in the 1870s does anyone know if that's possible. Anything possible maybe. Maybe I'm likely I know Jonathan was skeptical. Yeah, I would say it could be but you know you don't know about the, what's going on and you know with with the cold stratification and stuff being herbarium it might be dubious there but I would say that the seed stays viable in the in the seed bank in the wild for a long period of time. I just think it'd be worth it may be a long shot but it's probably worth taking a look you know we can maybe ask New York or you know get some sample out and just see if we can detect some viability in those seeds. I got to say. I actually held the Gattinger specimen from Tennessee. And I mean you just look at the mercury on the herbarium she coming from a seed quality perspective that might be a bit of an issue, just depending on how that mercury treatment was procured based on how much was splashed on the sheet. It's an awful lot. And depending on, I guess if the seed involved any of that or if it just got treated that might be an issue. In turn, in coming from like contemporary stuff. This seed does seem to require scarification really aggressive scarification to grow so I mean if we have reflexum collected in the last 20 to 30 years. That might be hopeful if we're looking at like stolen if from as a similar example. I mean, reflexum seed I've been growing stuff from as early as 1978 successfully 100% germination just about. So, that might be a more, I guess, alluring use if we can screen for these plants from collections made more recently. If we talk about reflexum there's a lot of collections made by county agents in the 50s and 60s so for all you and the herbarium side that might be kind of appealing. Sorry to interrupt Dr. Well, we have applied some of the same methods with the Kentucky ends that we used on the stolen if from. And that was basically to scarify them as Jonathan said, and we, we saw them in vitro vitro culture, just because that's it seems to give us a better. level of recovery, we get about 100% recovery with that germination in vitro and then can move the plants out of the test tube into soil. We have a number of them in vitro at the moment. We have some plants in the greenhouse in soil probably about 20 or so. So we can just keep producing them. We just weren't sure how many to keep moving into soil at this point we still have more seed and we could, we could move into that production scheme as well. It's if it's needed so. Thanks Valerie I'll just, I'll just mention, you know, this plan is so rare propagation and seed banking is kind of key to preventing it from going extinct at this point. Trying to refine those propagation protocols and increase seed for the banks and then also working on on on introduction projects and augmentation back into into those into the one extent site. That's something that we've been working with Jonathan on it on a student grant that he got through native plant society. And I know that we're kind of running a little late right now we'll take just a few more minutes before we pass it off to to running buffalo clover, but Jonathan do you want to just kind of real quick me we're looking at introduction sites. Better, you know, essentially our global water pod sites, because they're similar habitat but Jonathan you just want to give a quick update of the study that you did. I absolutely and I'll just quickly share screen to the abstract page in case anybody wants to check this. This research report I submitted 2019 to Tara, if anybody wants a copy I still have a very good PDF and I can get that to you. I put a blurb of it in the lady slipper which is Kentucky native plant society. I went out my background is more forages. I'm one of those people who does cattle management things like that. And in addition to what's the species composition I looked at how much biomass was out there and I took some soil samples. The key thing to look for here is that we're looking at really good I mean it's, it's almost perfect agricultural soil, which is why the bluegrass is not bluegrass anymore but it's a really high quality soil standing vegetation. We've got these clovers occurring in measurably different P and K rich soils with these little iron rich pockets. And that's been kind of interesting we also have this weird correlation of low forage mass and high soil fertility at these sites which is in terms of trying to maintain low vegetation with high soil fertility that's kind of a paradox so that kind of talks about the need of having herbivores this is just some more baseline data to say the other some kind of biomass management going on at these sites. I did some things with a plate meter to show we could measure this non destructively. I think what Terry is wanting me to go to is the end here where I talk about, you know, what my recommendations are and all that who pretty pictures pretty pictures pretty pictures. This has all my raw data as well so if anybody wants to look at this or double check it you're more welcome. So, you know, looking at the Kentucky clover recommendations. So these choices between Jessamine Creek Gorge and Camp Pleasant were proposed is like introduction spaces, looking out there. There are some floristic things that make me lean towards Camp Pleasant. And I mean, in terms of the productivity and such there's just more biomass at Jessamine Creek so based off of some of what we've seen in the habitats I think Camp Pleasant's going to be the way to go. Or the Franklin County site if you're looking at the notes here. So that's the quick and dirty if you want to look at this research report I will gladly send you a copy I don't know how it's put into nature preserves but yeah it was a really fun project. Before I pass it off to Mason. I'll just wrap up with some closing priorities for Kentucky clover. And then I'll call on Mason and then and then Heidi will start the running buffalo clover section. But yeah basically. We're kind of desperate with Kentucky clover. We're trying to increase seed do these introductions try to try to figure out how to prevent this thing from going extinct. Site conservation, looking for funding for some of that genetic research that we want to work on with Mason and Dr link Perez, and then. Yeah, that's a, that's kind of it in a nutshell there's lots of different projects and collaborations that we can work on. Yeah we're just trying to figure out how to do it all. Mason, you got something. Yeah, I do thanks thanks for calling on me I just wanted to give a few brief and I promise they'll be brief. Just updates and thoughts on the Tennessee populations. Um, so, I guess it was none of the two specimens have locality data so we don't know exactly where he was when he collected them. Last night I was looking at other specimens collected on Sir neck from the same month. And we can pretty safely assume that he was in the calcareous areas around Nashville, and that would be the outer Nashville basin. And just from from what I have seen and the various specimens that I've seen. That is a very poorly botanized area. Most people botanized the cedar glades east and southeast of Nashville, the actual, the more a mesic kind of burro key type habitats are very poorly botanized they could very, very easily still be out there. And so, the two of the species that you mentioned that co occur with it. So, I mean, this is not on Tennessee botanist radars we could easily find it if we looked, and there is a third Gattenger specimen, and located in Pittsburgh, which is not available online. And the first person who makes the drive to Pittsburgh will be the first botanist to get to see that. So, just want to throw that out there. And also there are Gattenger specimens scattered all over the country. And in other countries in fact I ran across Gattenger specimens when I was visiting the University of Tokyo. And so there, there is no telling how many other duplicates are floating around out there of Gattenger's material. Anyway, that's all I got Tara just a real quick comment. I forgot to add this that Tara actually put together a new key based on weekly key that we're planning on publishing that castanium paper to sort of raise awareness of people going out and looking to try to find more populations. Okay, well, thanks, Brad and Mason Mason's always a wealth of, of, of awesome information and sleuthing with those are barium specimens that's that's really good stuff. We'll continue this conversation with with clover and the future I'm sure there's going to be more meeting specifically on Kentucky clover and all the different projects but you know, different grants and and fundraising. Opportunities are certainly things that we're going to be looking into to look into more of these research projects with the DNA and Tennessee and then looking for new, new populations in Kentucky and Tennessee, and then the seed banking and propagation so with that, I haven't been looking at the chat. So I'll pass it off to. Oh, mobile. There's a question on mobile. We work with a Matthew on a lot of different seed banking projects but we have not with with Kentucky NC yet. We're trying to get our ducks in a row and try to figure out what we've got. So, certainly we can, we can, once we get enough seed we can send some to mobile as well. Of course it's always a funding issue. But there was one other question earlier on in your presentation about monitoring using vegetation plots. Will it asks if, if we're going to use Carolina vegetation survey style plots to to monitor the vegetation for Kentucky clover sites. Yeah, so we are, you know, we have been setting up the CVS plots and a lot of our other sites. We haven't been doing that on private land sites it's mostly been our managed areas, but particularly for the sites for Kentucky clover that are also water pod sites will we will be setting up those CVS plots to get that floristic data so we can do better floristic quality analysis. So, with that I know this is we're really packing this clover stuff in aren't we where you guys are going to. I don't think you'll get sick of clover but you might. But anyways, let's let's pass it off to Heidi, who's leading our RBC projects. Yeah, so hello it's nice to see a bunch of familiar faces. I'm going to start off our discussion on running buffalo clover in Kentucky. Okay. We conducted a statewide assessment of all of our accessible populations of running buffalo clover in Kentucky in 2019 and 2020. And this was so we could determine any potential effects delisting will have on this species as it was proposed for delisting in 2019. There were a handful of extant populations we were not able to get to for a number of reasons. Most of our populations occur on private properties, and it takes a lot of planning and reaching out to landowners to get permission to access their land. Also because of coven 19 and 2020. We couldn't knock on doors as we have in the past, where we hadn't been able to get a whole a hold of landowners via telephone or email. Plus a couple sites we were just denied access, but in total we were able to survey 61 element occurrences over the past two years, which was a major feat. We had the help from a couple other agencies and universities. Thanks to all of them for helping us gather this data. So KDFWR EKU and KU for service and US Fish and Wildlife Service all were very helpful. So all of the surveys that we conducted at nature preserves, we gathered a specific set of data, and that included a number of rooted crowns number of flowers number of patches patch sizes as well as the associated species and their abundances and canopy cover. Before I get into the results of our surveys. This is just to refresh everyone on the specifics of RBC ranking criteria. It's based on number of rooting crowns in a population, as well as the habitats that plants grow in. So RBC suitable habitat includes woodlands river of terraces or partially shaded lawns, and it needs some degree of disturbance whether it be natural or not natural. So the results of those 61 surveys are varied. 24 populations were relatively stable, maintaining numbers from previous surveys. 12 EOS actually showed an increase in population size and eight declined in population size. The four populations we failed to find on previous surveys they were in the smaller range in the CDD rank. And then the 13 populations marked as extirpated were tick typically either previously failed to find or thought to be extirpated. So we were just confirming that they were in fact extirpated. Highlighting some of our a ranked populations. Again, these populations were had over 1000 rooted crowns. In 2019 we surveyed dare properties. We did an intensive survey, and we found a 1,769 rooted crowns, a lower variety fork at the Bluegrass Army Depot they had 1148. And then in 2020 we surveyed two more a pop rank populations scrubgrass Creek with 1101 rooted crowns. And then last but certainly not least was the population along Upper Howard's Creek at Mount Farley farm in Clark County it had 6,330 rooted crowns, as well as 1496 flowers so that was a really awesome find. So here is our range map of our extant populations. Each of the different dots representing the different EO ranks that you can see up in the upper left hand corner. Overall, our RBC populations are located in the Bluegrass region, with the exception of one population along little clover Creek and Jackson County, that's the plateau escarpment. And the highest concentration of populations are in the outer bluegrass, specifically up near Boone County, and those in Madison and Clark counties. I separated these maps just so there was less overlap of the dots. So these are all over extirpated populations. There are 40 of them, and they tend to be concentrated in the inner bluegrass where there's heavy urban and agricultural development, and then as well as at the Bluegrass Army Depot. We don't rank planted populations as they're not naturally occurring, but here is the map of our planted populations in Kentucky it definitely needs updating. There are numerous other known planted populations. On the map, it shows introduced populations that are at Shaker Town, Taylor Fork and Meadow Brook farms, but we do know of other introduced populations, including one in Boyle County and other various farms and private properties in the state. Potential future work for RBC could be to reintroduce plants back into areas where they have been extirpated, as well as introducing new populations. So this is a map of all of the managed areas with RBC in or within one mile of the property. Most of these listed have RBC occurring within their boundaries but I also included other areas within a mile of RBC as they could be potential areas to introduce new populations. Currently, there's not enough management being done for RBC in the state, with the exception of NKU's stream restoration projects, which involve for moving invasive species around their populations. And there have been work days here and there, but I think we really need to do more. So basically, this map shows all the areas where there's opportunity to encourage and work with our landowners to manage for their RBC. This would involve reducing invasive species, potentially thinning dense forest canopies to increase light through to the forest floors, and bringing in occasional disturbance regimes, be that mowing, trampling or grazing. So overall, we really need to focus on making management happen on these properties to ensure RBC stays on this landscape long term. As I mentioned earlier, there was big news for running Buffalo Clover this year in Kentucky. You may recognize the owner, Laura Freeman, she was the original owner of Laura's beef. Now she has multiple other business ventures, including Laura's hemp chocolates and Laura's mercantile. But I stumbled across this EO in 2019 and realized just how big it might be. So we did an exhaustive survey in 2020, and it turned out to be the largest population in the state by far. The running Buffalo Clover all occurs along the bend of the Upper Howard's Creek on terraces and music woodlands, as well as in cattle pastures. So the site offers really great opportunity for us to learn from it. We can, there can be studies done on the management effect of the cattle grazing as it has both areas with no cattle grazing and areas with it. And then another great thing we did last year, we've worked with Laura to make part of her property a registered natural area with Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves. So as this is quite a unique site. Also, more exciting news was a population was rediscovered at Lower Howard's Creek State Nature Preserve, making it the only population in the state to actually occur on one of our protected state nature preserves. And this population was found in a hiking trail that had been less heavily trafficked due to COVID-19. Moving on to research. Larry was unable to make it today so I'll just note some of the things he sent along. He is still continuing his research at Adair NKU site and the scrubgrass creek site at Clay W. The numbers on the Adair property have been in decline ever since monitoring started there in 2005. He attributes this to a decrease in the light reaching the forest floor as well as invasion from other species. And overall he thinks more management is needed for these plants to survive. And then additional updates we will, I will pass this over to Jen Coslow of EKU and her grad student Ted, and they'll be giving us some updates on their research at Taylor Fork Ecological Area and the bluegrass army depot, as well as Jonathan Kabush on seed banking of RBC. Hi everyone. Actually Ted is going to give the talk because he was really on point to create the models that he'll be talking about, not that I didn't have anything to do with it but here I'll kill time by introducing Ted who started working with Lilla Clover. What was it in 17 maybe? Is that right or 18? And he worked on it for a project as an undergraduate and for like for several years and now he's a graduate student working at Lily Cornet Woods. So he's still working with me. He's just in the master's program. All right. Is that enough time? Yes, thank you. All right, so thanks for the intro, Jen. So I'm going to be talking about all RBC population viability analysis we've done. I'm going to be running through a lot of it pretty fast just for the sake of time, but I'm happy to obviously answer any questions or, you know, I can share my email and you can email me questions if you have them. So I'm going to start with the stuff we've done on the BGAD, the Bluegrass Army Depot, and these are count based population viability analyses. So music just representing the geometric growth rate over time, Sigma squared is the variance and you have the population size for 2019 and the probabilities of extinctions and I just would like to focus on on the value of these PVAs and so looking at these EOs 34 is more than twice the size of 56 and yet it's relatively more at risk of extinction. And so as we obviously need to be efficient with our management we don't have unlimited time to help every single VO this helps focus down monitoring and management efforts. So this is just showing the inflorescences and rooted crowns over time, but I would like to point out that like, just, I can't speak for the 2003 but the 2018 really low inflorescence count is most likely just because we had trouble getting out there early on in the summer. So we think we've just simply missed it. It's not that it weren't flower. And then for those of you that might not be super familiar with PVAs. This graph is just showing the cumulative probability of extinction for a single EO over 50 years. I just wanted to show this to highlight how crazy wide the confidence intervals are, which makes sense when you think about it because even if it's a healthy population. If you have a few bad years in a row a few good years in a row, you're going to get crazy confidence intervals, and that's why we don't use this type of data for to say that you know, in 10 years has exactly a 12% chance it's looking more at the EOs relatively speaking. So in summary, these types of analyses are always good for helping us focus in on management, and I'm sure we're all aware of this but for exact numbers, you know, more than half the ESA are plants, even when everything that should be on there isn't. And then they've received less than 5% funding as of 2020. And these PVAs are called for the ESA recovery. So moving on to the more advanced stuff that really isn't called for with recovery plans for species, at least not often. At Taylor Fork Ecological Area we did demographic or stage based PVAs. And so these are plants that it's a restoration populations and this is clonal reproduction only, I'll elaborate more on that in a minute. So doing these demographic analyses are difficult for, you know, simple life histories, running buffalo clover makes it even harder because this life graph is just showing progressions, it doesn't even show progressions that skip stages or fertility. So it's very messy and it's hard to keep track of, but it is possible. These are some of the original stages that were proposed by a little Ethel Hookie in 95. So just looking at them obviously, you know, different stage individuals are going to be different populations of time. So for the stages in writing, we obviously don't just look at them and eyeball and go, oh yeah, that looks like a three. We have specific criteria, but for the analyses we used, again, because it is production only, we took out stage ones because they shouldn't be there. And then we condensed stages four or five and six into just an advanced stage, mostly just because four or fives and six was weren't common enough to populate the model on there. These graphs are just a highlight that we've done analyses in the past to confirm that the criteria we use to assess the stages for RBC are valid. So we use total stolen length and number of nodes per crowd per crown to assess stage in both are related with the number of offspring, or the reproductive values that stage we're using, we know for sure are valid stages. And then we got to move on to the fun stuff using our, and we stuck the methods and recommendations from Morrison Dokes 2002 quantitative conservation biology. So some of the important results. Stable stage distribution is simply over time when you project a species out so far, eventually, because the environmental stochasticity and everything can't really shake up the stage distribution, the model converge in on a specific stage distribution. And this wasn't too surprising for most part, we see stage twos and stage threes. Relatively a few amount of advanced stages. And then the reproductive value tells us the, what those stages tend to contribute in reproduction. And interestingly enough, again this is just colonial reproduction but stage threes actually are more important for colonial reproduction, advanced stages, which wasn't really necessarily expected. And then probably the most important part that this gives us is the elasticity matrix, and I have the important value highlighted there so the elasticity matrix informs us that changes in survivorship of stage threes from year to year has the biggest impact on population growth over time. So, especially with just limited to phone reproduction, just survivorship of stage threes is what's more important, not the necessarily super big individuals. And so, just to sum it up kind of briefly. Again, this is just focusing on colonial reproduction, which I know might seem a little odd, but to do these demographic analyses with seeds there is requires a lot more data just on the seed bank and how viable every single seed is. We just simply don't have that data. And so, the exclusion of that was important for the analyses and then just harvesting the seeds from the restoration populations allow us to share those seeds for other purposes also. So, there's benefits to it. So, stage three persistence and reproduction are the most important for just the colonial reproduction if advanced stages were which are the ones that tend to fly are the ones that do flower, we're allowed to, if we allow the seeds to, you know, hit the ground, would be more relevant, especially for reproductive value, but for this elasticity matrix, even if we added seedlings into it, I don't know if that'd be enough to overcome this wide gap in importance that these have over the advanced stages. So, eventually, if we know of specific management practices that somehow promote threes over advanced stages. That would allow us to, at least if we're trying to promote colonial growth would be good for them. And then moving forward, there's always ways to improve models like this the stuff gets really complicated so better data on vital rates seed bank information can always make better analyses. And it, I forgot to mention earlier, when I was talking about the big add populations but I did want to know that the with the big add populations. The from observation there, the, the net those natural populations that microstegium is probably the biggest threat to those. I said just over the couple summers that I worked with it. So microstegium swallow up more than a couple plots. But some of the references we've used for all that. And then, I don't know if we have time or whatever we get to it. Obviously happy to answer. Before we pass it off to Jonathan to give an update on some seed banking. And then we can talk about propagation for a minute. Julian, you got your hand raised. Yeah, I'm just continually curious about, you know, the bluegrass army depot was created by Tom blue and others back in 1992, I think it was. And the quite a lot of detailed work was done from 92 to 2002 I helped with some of that. But I haven't yet seen really a synthesis, obviously the message a little bit difficult, different back in the early first decade but would, wouldn't it be useful to combine data from population growth standpoint we have combined data because we're able to make the population viability analysis, but I just haven't seen charts. Are you talking about floristic analysis or what the populations I haven't seen trends yet I haven't seen charts we've show the whole trend all the way from 92 to current other some charts like that and some of the theses. You must have missed that one we also have a paper that went out in been a while now I think 15 where we published the first pva. Yeah, I have to look again but I couldn't find it recently I was looking for those data and I couldn't find them. Ted has a, I think he showed it the trends over time with back to 2002 I'm saying back to 1992. Oh, well, so Julian that gets really complicated because there's different populations and different. So it's hard to know what's like how do you summarize data when some of them came from someplace some of them were partial surveys some of them have been extirpated some of them have. That's why they. For what it's worth I think it was pretty thorough survey that was done back in the first 10 years and I think it would be worth to combine data even though it might be perfect. I think it would be worthwhile doing. I would get that but I'm just saying the reason we didn't include those in the EO is because, like, as we find things or whatever we're not we're tracking different sites and different areas, and if you want to look at how a particular place is growing, then you need to at least be comparing apples to apples and not like apples and oranges. That's the only reason those long term data aren't all included in the pba. Thanks Ted and Jen, you guys have done some really awesome research, some foundational research for for RBC. Jonathan I was going to call on you to kind of maybe give a summary of seed banking I know that we have a lot of propagation that we really won't go into right now. For the sake of time, but you know there could be different groups that spur from, from, you know this that that delve more into that but you know we can grow RBC we can transplant it. We feel pretty good about that. But Jonathan, if you want to give an update. Gladly so in terms of seed banking again norm did a great job about collecting stolen it from. I'll quickly share that again really quickly thanks to EKU. I have some of the seed here from Jen Coslow she shipped up some seed. So we have seed from 2012 to 2019. From the Taylor Forks site, part of that preventing the reproduction by seed. So that is very handy in terms of seed testing we're looking to do some studies about seed viability seed quality through time. And we're just kind of lining up those projects here's the nice email. It's really important if anybody is banking seed from these wild sites, just putting down some of these details about provenance, or just where it came from who collected it what's their contact info is crucial because I'll just give this quick example. I've had to track some stolen it from down in the past. So from my side of the fence this is some work norm did with Julian back in the 90s, where he tried to make them all reproduced with one another. What do you know, be this might be some validation for Kentucky and see status as if we can try and see if it will cross pollinate with reflection. And this is the one of interest PI 516444 West Virginia Rodney barches of this stolen it from. And what I've been trying to do is just kind of track down where norm got all these different accessions from because we have some really good information from norm side of things. And back to the wild populations that came from. So if we take this accession we go back to the USDA seed bank. It's s dash 232 that stolen it from dash one it's his first collection. The germ plasma bank got an 86 so this is near the discovery of the species. There's quick summary here here we know how it got entered into the system. So you go back to the original notes and they used to be these big published books, about 1200 pages. And it's from norm Taylor from Lexington collected by Rodney barches he got it 84. So this is right near the rediscovery. And I actually have it here I'll go into my email. I can make my email go. And shoot I just forwarded this. Here we go 1984 running waffle clover I got in touch with the barches. And after all this hard digging we were able to find out that it's probably from either Cotton Hill in West Virginia or from this back fork. In Webster County. So, the application here is that we do have a lot of material, a lot of it is presumed to be from the bluegrass of Kentucky, collected sometime the late 80s to the early 90s. The USDA has been doing seed increases on some of these. So that's been good. They're doing that out at Pullman Washington. And we're still doing a little bit of hide and go seek in terms of figuring out where these come from a natural population so if anybody's doing any seed banking, absolutely critical to just get some provenance some locality data, etc. I don't blame norm here. A lot of these accessions were contributed and he was mid work when he passed so these were just kind of taken from his collection and then deposited into the germ plasm system. I'm speaking with two of his former students, Dr. Cuisinbury in Florida, and also talking with Lynn Akin who just recently moved from Lexington to Florida, just kind of track how they divided up his collection. So, yeah, if you had had any actions with norm Taylor or if you knew anything about some of those collections that's important. And then just going back to that original publication of. It would be good to know these things it would be good to just keep track of some of these records just for from the research perspective, but stolen it from looking very good. Again, very well represented. All right, great. Before we go into the last clover. I just wanted to mention for RBC I mean there's there's so much more work. You know, regionally that we could have pulled into this meeting. This whole meeting could have just been about running Buffalo clover. Jennifer Finfaira, the Ohio field office. For US Fish and Wildlife Service recovery biologist, you know as this species is potentially delisted in the future. I know this year, and in future years there's going to be more meetings, you know, coordinated by that field office. Moving forward. But yeah, Heidi, I don't know if you have any last last thoughts in terms of where we go from here. Obviously, at Nature Preserves have our priorities with what you've already highlighted but maybe anyone have any questions or comments before we move on to reflect some Julian. Did Nature Preserves ever put out a statement recommending changes on no changes to the listing of Theloniferum? So, we did submit our comments. You know, in general we did agree that it's trending towards delisting, but before that is done, we would like to see more cooperative management agreements with particularly Kentucky Fish and Wildlife, WMAs and other managed areas. Currently the only official cooperative management agreement we have is with Bluegrass Army Depot. So we just have a lot of work, even though it's on, you know, these protected areas. Last fall when we had the comment period, I never did see your comments posted on the US Fish and Wildlife Service website. Could you share your comments with us? Sure, yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely. It's on that public forum. Yeah, yeah, I could definitely. I couldn't find it there. I think it was late in the day or something. I'm not sure. Yeah, anyone else had seen those comments that we put out there? I saw that you posted comments. Okay, I'll check again. Sorry. It basically says that same thing. Yes, in terms of, you know, the grand scheme of things, it's not the rarest of the rare species, you know, for federally listing that we work on, it is trending towards delisting. But yeah, we definitely all need to work together to, you know, because once it's delisted, we don't have any, hardly any funding opportunities to work on it, you know. And even with the funding that we do get, we are working with a few thousand dollars a year, honestly, to try to monitor and coordinate management of like over 100 populations in the state on just a few thousand dollars a year. So leveraging those existing resources is important. So there's lots of good comments and Julian sent out some some some drafts and we'll compile all that information. But in the sake of time, we're going to move on to reflex on we really don't have too much going on with reflection in our state that Devon will kind of give you guys an overview of what we know so far. Okay, so a trifolium reflexum is our third rare native rare clover to talk about for the day. And put forth a lot of different slides for this because, because I was, you know, not as much to say not as much research, but still fits into our theme of rare native clovers and I believe that believe that Dan Boone and Tara and perhaps Julian spent a little bit more time looking at this and a number of our sites across the state. And this is a this is another species that requires disturbance in a lot of places across its range. It seems to have a very like beneficial relationship with with fire. So, being that it is so rare and prescribed fire is is is also kind of sparse. We haven't been able to observe the effects of prescribed fire on on this species, but it is notable that that similar to stolen a from. This is a very wide range ranging clover. I think now I just checked nature serve and I think this is currently ranked as G3 globally, and is is listed as rare in virtually half the states that it occurs in. But it is declining across its range, really for probably a lack of the disturbance that it needs. And the data set that I that I used here to plot the reflection populations did not include a couple like larger location obscured records. But it at least goes to show you that we have virtually. It's eight existing populations, and a number of those occur at mammoth cave. And we have another population that we consider stand at Penny Ralph State Forest, as well as land between the lakes, National Creation Area, and Clarks River National Wildlife Refuge. It is it is good that we have some populations on protected lands. And to my knowledge, I can at least say that we've, we've had conversations with mammoth cave National Park staff, as well as land between the lakes staff of the Forest Service, as well as staff with US Fish and Wildlife at Clarks River as to the just how rare this native clover is and the sorts of management that are important to to maintain viable populations where they have them. And with a with a couple of these little uncertain about long term plans with with management. So we're just trying to continue to work with work with folks to try and get prescribed fire management on some of these populations. And land between the lakes actually recently had a had a prescribed burn on a population. I believe it was last winter. And it's, it's one that's, it's a population that's very close to another federally listed, or, or not another, but it's, it's close to a federally threatened species prices potato bean apiose priciana. There was this large burn unit. Some of it burned over the prices potato bean habitat. And so really curious how the fire effects of course, the apiose but at the same time it coincidentally burns the site, the only existing site in land between the lakes that has trifle and reflexum. And yeah, we were not really we I guess like we saw like a small increase in the in the number of plants there I think it went from only three or four plants to like maybe three adults, the after the burn, if about a dozen seedlings or rosettes. And then, I think, I think Clarks River National Wildlife Refuge has some plans to to manage their post oak flatwoods that have pretty large recently discovered population out there. And I haven't talked to the state forest folks, or, or mammoth cave staff recently but there's a there's a lot of work to be done here as far as there's a need for additional surveys to find new populations. There's need for getting some of these populations seed banked so that they don't, they don't like out and go extirpated. But, but also, hopefully, once we can get some seed, we can take the seed from inoper inopportune or inconvenient places for management and put them into places that can receive consistent management. Which I think is an issue with some of the other clovers is, you know, we need to make sure it doesn't go extirpated or extinct before we can collect seed of it. But then once we have the seed, being able to put it into areas that will receive consistent management because just just like trifolium stolen ifrum, it's it's something where it just needs to be consistently managed over time. So, a lot, a lot of, a lot of things are open ended here. And I'm curious if anybody else has any interesting observations about reflection but this is just my, my quick bit about about this. I don't know for hours about it but we don't have time, but anybody wants to check out they go to my Facebook or Google my name and do a search you can see a lot of different, you know, pictures and information about it. I have some 2020 information on Clarks River. Oh yeah yeah I'm curious what you would have to report, Jonathan. So Mason Brock sent me out there kind of on a whim. So, I borrowed a friend's car drove all the way from Nashville to Clarksville visit with Mason, and then I made a visit out there. Shoot I don't have the seed packet in front of me but just early July, just to go see the population that he was reporting on in Western Kentucky. I was supposed to fly out to Oregon the next day so it's pretty fortuitous I was complaining to Dan of all people on the phone and I looked down and there they are, so nest and ready to go for seed collections I didn't get to catch flower color. I took seed from nine plants individually so we have single plant selections for you know research and such. Yeah, a nine plants, one of the plants had seed heads but failed to set seed, which was just kind of interesting. I don't think we really talk a lot about reproductive failure in native clovers but when you look at some of the agricultural ones it's it's pretty common, especially for stolen ones. In terms of seed quality I actually started some starting January 25 in the lab observed an interesting seed priming effect from butanolide, which is the, I guess the germination promoter and spoke. So we did a butanolide treatment seed was sitting there. I decided to spark them with sketch some scarification medium grit sandpaper and the embryo inside the seed was already primed. And within a day we had fully formed plants coming up on the germination paper. I have about 120 plants in the greenhouse keeping track of who was mama. So we have the, we have it kind of represented. So if we do a seed increase we'll try and do a representative one where we balance out all of the parent plants, kind of capture the diversity and don't have it skew towards the plants that really enjoy growing in the greenhouse. So the nine plants I saw were on the edge of the post oak flatwoods, they were almost growing in the tire rut. Some sedges a little bit of junk us kind of at the habitat. Yeah, it's, it's kind of interesting there's there's a number of a number of the cool plants that grow there grow in the areas with the shallowest duff layer, like almost like they're referring these small little micro habitats, where, where there's, there's not leaf cover. And you see that with a centunculus minimus this little little tiny and post oak areas for reflexum. But it all depends on what you know the habitat you're getting into whether you're getting into a rocky area. I mean it's very really variable since it's the most wide ranging of the trifoliums. And I guess the, the strange thing is that I was also growing some seed from Dan Boone collected about the same time. And when you grow them side by side Dan Boone stuff. It just popped it was ready to go it was excited about coming up and germinating so I think we might be looking at some differences across the range in terms of dormancy requirements. So it all. Like I said it's the wide most wide ranging clover in the eastern United States and it. I would rather call it deer clover instead of buffalo clover up another situation but people can contact me if you really want a lot more information or flex them because I've studied it for 25 years now. I guess one of my baby. So the alternate things that could be happening just given how uniform Dan's flower colors on some of those is there might have been a different selection in the absence of fire up near Cincinnati as well. It's flowers without fire there. It comes up about every year in fact, I'll probably be looking at some rosettes today. But I mean when you look down is especially as you get into like collections from Mississippi, Georgia, if you look at some of the seed notes you'll see there's generally a red a pink and a white category so not to say the flower color is the only trait but there's some research. Simple Mendelian and yeah the pubescent some of the shit really. But there's there seems to be something there but yeah Clarks River is collected with Tara's blessing. I can get that seed up to you. If you'd like some at nature preserves. If anybody else needs to collaborate with Tara's permission I have. It's a lot it's not like I'm sitting on pounds of seed I just have I can get. I can get you if you're interested I can hook you up what you need. Life history wise I think we can complete a cycle here in about 120 days. So yeah, it's really interesting. I hate to have missed out on the mammoth cave stuff I hear that that's Indian Hills is I studied that site for many years and that site persisted and flower without any type of disturbance that's growing on the sandstone cliff. I went 16 years down to Flint Ridge without success and then after they get a burn hundreds if not thousands of plants popped up and that's a beautiful red color so. And then my roommate Joe he he found the stuff at Penner oil. A few years back I don't know if anybody's ever got back there and look at that that was that was really snow white color. And I know there was an old mine area years ago that Norman had mentioned it was cream color so you can, you can have variability in the color, the stuff up at Indian Hills usually was pink to kind of pinkish white. The stuff that Flint Ridge was red, and then you can have some cream and white color flowers also I did notice that the color and the look of the flowers at Clarks River looked a lot like the stuff that grows here in the Cincinnati area. So I thought that was really interesting for me one of Mason Brock's original photos of that speech, you know that population. Yeah, I didn't mean to say at the USDA level mammoth cave is very well represented. In fact we have a time sequence from every time norm went from, I think, 76 on. And then there's one post humus donation, I think Mason Brock was on that or it's got Julian's name on it of reflection from land between the lakes, and I think it's got the site. So, yeah, that if you're looking for seed resources. Yeah, yeah we need, we really need, I really want to find, try and find the best place where we can, we can introduce this to either a heritage land conservation fund site, or a state nature preserve. So I'm definitely looking around for that. If you know about any seed and Dan thanks for your comments and I know I know I got I got to get out in the field with you sometime. Hope that works out. I would like to look at those stolen. Down at the round. Big bone lick I know that that's getting poor up by microstadium and stuff. So, thanks for that quick overview of reflex and Devin, and I guess kind of to wrap up a few thoughts of where we go from here we're kind of running a little late. Real quick before I say that I see Pat has this awesome specimen of reflex some in flower, can you show that off Pat. I've been working with Jonathan with the stolen effort and stuff and I got more into the clovers and research and stuff. He gave me some material of reflexum but that seed cord germination it. I don't know maybe I should have done a little bit more to prep the seed. So we ended up finding a, this is a Florida eco type of reflexum. It's kind of not focusing. Where's that from Pat, where's that where's the seed source. I contacted the guy, and he said it's just some guy that randomly collects seed on his own property, and there's not really good. What state, you know the state. It's Florida. It would have been northern Florida. Okay. And so, yeah, what we do is we, we produce a lot of plants and the 10s of 1000s 100s of 1000s for ecological restoration. Unfortunately, in Missouri, they don't have facilities that really do the native plants for the restoration so they outsource it to actual companies because the companies can make money doing it. And so we can really step up production on stuff. So I've taken the reflexum. And we're actually making this available, because it doesn't have a list that status in the state of Missouri. We're going to make it available to the public or people who are really interested in looking at these clovers trying to get people hands on with the clovers that that previously hasn't been offered or available to people. So they get interest and they learn more and as we find learn learning kind of leads to conservation and in Missouri we have a very successful native plant conservation program called grow native, it's through the Missouri Prairie Foundation. And yeah, so right now I think we have 1000 1000 reflexum. Well Missouri is the first place I ever seen reflexum. Yeah, I'm still yet to see these things in the water just like I can't find. So in Missouri, I know what the prairie is a pretty good place that's the first place I've seen it in the flowers or cream color. Yeah, I'm hoping to with these little pink flowers it really appeals to people, because I think the Missouri ones are all pretty much that land. I have you got some red stuff I know Ethel Hickey had found a population in Missouri and the Ozarks one side of the road it was white and then farther down it was red so you had a mixed population of white and red. So that can that can happen. And it's you got red stuff in Missouri. I'll be on the lookout this year. Let me know be posted on Facebook. Yeah, we're just trying to go along and I got all of Jonathan's stolen it from and we're just waiting until spring I got to divide this was probably. Probably turn into about 20 plants. So, but we're currently at about 450 thanks. Thanks. So, yep. Well, real quick to wrap this up because I know we're running late we did want to hear from Cooper, but we've kind of run out of time. I knew this was going to happen. So I'm going to go ahead and talk about the Clover topics to discuss again that the, the, the, the kind of purpose of this meeting was to just kind of update everyone, all at once because so many of the so many of these Clover projects overlap with the different species so just kind of throwing who's working on what we'll throw out a attendee list of, you know, different contacts, you know, our intent here, you know, with with nature reserves and, you know, working with native plant society on some volunteer days is to just continue to work, mostly focusing on Kentucky Clover and running Buffalo Clover. I'd love to work more on Reflexum. If we had more resources. I know Mason I want to hear from Cooper to and but but yeah Reflexum, like, like Devin said is is a there's still a lot more work with with with managing agencies on that species. We will, you know, between me and Devin and Heidi will come up with some follow up to this group. And, you know, some different projects moving forward, you know, and come up with some structure to update you guys on. In terms of, you know, these different projects. And yeah, there's a lot of need you know we don't have much resources to work on these projects so yes we're constantly trying to figure out where to get these resources to work on projects. If anyone has any weeds on that kind of thing. That would be great for research and propagation and introductions in particular, you know, nature reserves is is going to, you know, continue with our, you know, monitoring and and trying to coordinate, you know, some management on some of these populations, but yeah all these questions that was just posed by Julian several times that's kind of what we're trying to do here. So, mouse just quit working. So yeah, let's let's just keep this communication going. And, and we will send out a link to this meeting and and with some meeting notes and some follow up. But if anyone else has any other pressing questions, we will kind of wrap it up here because I know folks need to go about their day. But any, any last comments Heidi or Devin, you want to say anything. Can I can I say one last. Is that Jonathan. That's Cooper. I was just going to say, yeah, I wasn't going to mention trouble and calcaricum but I mean if if southeast aggressions initiative can be of any use for seed banking it sounds like everyone already has that taken care of all the different institutions but we've got to see bank up and running and so if we could be of any assistance we're happy to do that. Great, Cooper. And, yeah, there's a lot of overlap with a lot of these projects with with Tennessee and STI and we want to work. We want to we want to work with as many partners as possible to try to conserve these these clovers so so reach out let's let's get some projects going.