 And so without any further ado, we're a little tiny bit ahead of schedule, but I'm out of welcoming things to say. So I thought I'd turn it over to some of our board members and we will talk about who we are a little bit and also what we've been up to. So it's a big updates kind of talk, and also the state of Kentucky plant conservation. So I'm going to turn it over to Tara Littlefield, which she's our KNPS president. There we go. Thank you, Jen. And I'll reiterate this is super exciting. This is the first zoom symposium conference that I've been involved in in organizing. And I really love it that a lot of people have their screens on the videos I can see people's faces it's really exciting. Been a little people deprived this year. So that's really exciting. Welcome Kentucky botany community and beyond. I'm Tara Littlefield, and I am very excited about everyone joining us for this cool event that highlights some of the botany projects that are going on right now across our state. So a little bit of background on Kentucky native plant society, we are an organization nonprofit statewide organization whose mission is to promote education preservation and protection of native plants and natural communities. Before I go on to that because I'm kind of new at this I realized that I was supposed to have shared my screen. So let's see the screen share now Jen. Oh, there it is on the bottom. Okay. So people who know me know that I love to say for the love of Kentucky plants a lot. So this is my cover slide, a bunch of plants that are really important to me. So, I'll, I'll start this again now that I've got my screen everyone can see my screen. So this event is organized by the Kentucky native plant society so we are a nonprofit statewide organization whose mission is to promote education preservation and protection of native plants and natural communities. We work on accomplishing this mission through efforts involving native plant education and outreach, supporting native plant research, supporting rare plant conservation, appreciating natural communities and encouraging the appropriate use of native plants in gardens and restoration projects. The purpose of this symposium is to bring people together professionals, academics, citizen scientists and actively discuss current topics and projects that are occurring across the state and use this as a way of creating an interconnected network of plant people, partners of supporters that can help us tackle some of these issues we face in order to ensure that the native plants of Kentucky and beyond are here for generations to come. So we all, we all love plants we all want them to be around for a long time. So we're also really excited to hear from Dr. Alan weekly, our keynote speaker who will be discussing plant diversity in the southeast conservation and future resources and current resources for plant knowledge. Who are we. So the native plant society has been around since 1986. Next year will be our 35th anniversary so that's a really long, a really long standing organization. The folks that are members of the Kentucky native plant society. I mentioned this already we're academics, professionals, citizen scientists, gardeners, we all share love of plants. I've been involved with the native plant society for about 17 years. I first started out leading hikes at our spring law flower weekend. I have served many roles, a few roles over the years. And for this past term 2018 to 2020, I've been the current president, but I'm also a professional botanist a heritage botanist and plant conservation manager at the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves. And so a lot of the talks that you'll hear here here today are our folks from from nature preserves in our plant conservation section. So our other volunteer executive committee members include Vice President Heidi Brown writer who is also a nature preserve botanist, Secretary Emily Ellingson, who is the native plants curator at the UK Arboretum and botanical garden and who's a local botanist, long standing member, you can see the photos here I don't know if you can see my little pointer here but everyone was really good about sending in photos except for bill so bill may or may not be a cowboy on a horse. But that's what you get when you don't send in your bios or your pics for our website. But he's our long standing treasure he's been our treasure for about a decade. Our volunteer or our board members include Dr. Jen Coslow. I don't think you really gave an introduction to yourself Jen. Jen is a plant ecologist from and teaches at the Eastern Kentucky University. He's on our board as well he's the botanist at the Danube National Forest, Deborah White consultant botanist and former nature preserve botanist West Cunningham who's also a consultant botanist. And last but certainly not least, Jeff Nelson, who's a local botanist out in Western Kentucky and long standing member, and I wanted to give an additional shout out to Jeff Nelson. Thanks, who he is also our webmaster and our social media Facebook admin, and we could not do what we do without Jeff, and certainly all of our other board and executive members. I just wanted to give a shout out to Susan Harkins and Nick Koenig, who are ladies slip, ladies slipper newsletter editors and so you'll hear more from from them and more about our newsletter and our website in a little bit. So in the beginning of the year. We had a lot of promise, Jeff Nelson lid efforts with made a plant society to begin a strategic planning process back in February. We had a lot of interest in attendance. Up here in the in the right corner that's we met at Burnheim in person so this was obviously before. COVID hits. So that was really great lots of momentum. And in early March, several native plant society members and nature preserve folks went down to these partners for plant conservation meeting. In Georgia back in early March and we were really excited to learn and collaborate with our many southeastern partners on many topics similar to the talks you'll see today. So of course we didn't plan for the global pandemic in our strategic planning and a lot of the things that we were planning this year. We had to adjust our plans and put a lot of things on hold, like a lot of via the world. We normally host an annual wildflower weekend in the in the spring, and that's for the public. We have hikes workshops fall meetings or symposiums. But of course, those were kind of shelf to the side as priorities shifted this year. So, there might be a slide missing. Yes, I wanted to say, despite these changes, we were really lucky to still accomplish several goals through the native plant society this past year, including revamping our newsletter, and we were able to award some grants. Much of my time was spent at my job at nature reserves conducting field work and so many virtual meetings. A lot of virtual meetings, I live out in the country with bad internet so it was, it was touchy at best but we got through it. And of course I've got small children this year, I became a full time teacher, as well as a full time professional botanist of what I've always been. So, I realized that you can't really function with little sleep, possibly half the time. I also learned that my daughter is now at the age where she can be an actual field assistant. So she's eight. So we did a lot of field work together in the spring in the summer and so that was actually really exciting. She was my assistant on the Trillium Pusilum status surveys that I did back in the spring, and I would check up on rare plants and she would try to catch critters like salamanders and amphibians and things like that. So, just real quick, some native plant statistics we've got a really diverse state from the Cumbulum Mountains in the east to the swamps in the west. A lot of cool natural areas in between that you're going to hear about in a lot of our talks. We have over 2400 native plants, 434 non native or non vascular plants. And now over 80 described natural communities, thanks to recent efforts by Martina Heinz, who's a ecologist at Nature Preserves, along with some other biologists. There has been new lichen survey work conducted by Dr. Risk and Nature Preserve staff Kendall McDonald. So we're really excited about that just over 50 new state records have been described recently, or have been discovered recently. And we're still finding new species unknown to science in the state. So how cool is that. Of course our floral diversity is declining in many areas and we've all heard development and habitat loss and invasive species and kind of that doom and gloom scenario that kind of creeps up in our daily lives. Only 5% of our flora is is rare word listed. Globally it's much worse with two fifths of the plants at risk of extinction. But I tend not to focus on negative stats and I like to think about ways that we can improve the situation. And I really like nerdy botanical names, apparently. But at the very least we can all work together and try to accomplish our goals of conserving our floor together. So teamwork and partnerships. I feel like that's happening. We've increased new memberships new partnerships and connections and they're being made in strides in the realm of plant conservation in particular. I've been particularly amazed at the influx of the next generation of plant enthusiasts. The office of Kentucky nature reserves has increased focus these past few years on plant conservation efforts with our newly formed plant conservation sections we now have seven staff running around doing botanical work and coordinating really important conservation projects around the state. We even had our first intern this past semester Elijah Hicks who was working on conservation projects in the Red River porch. I'll touch real quick on just a few of native plant societies initiatives. We love iNaturalist. It's been a really big hit and I know that in several of the talks you'll be hearing about some of the cool things that were found through iNaturalist. But in 2019 we started the Kentucky Botanist big year and so this is a really good tool to use if you'd like to make life lists. And it's a great own personal database. I use it as my own personal database as I travel around the country and in Kentucky as well. So this year the event is still ongoing but last year we gave out coffee mugs and you see Candle over here in the corner with her coffee mug. We gave out prizes to the most identified, most observed and most species. So that's just such a really neat tool and we're still discovering new things on iNaturalist and creating new projects. So please I encourage you to get, if you are on iNaturalist, get on some of our projects and get involved. So I'll also mention our new citizen sciences program that we're working on with the native plant society. So Nature Preserves has been involved in Whitehaired Goldenrod Conservation and the Red River Gorge for several decades. We're working with the Forest Service to create a volunteer citizen scientist program to monitor the Whitehaired Goldenrod along with other species in the sandstone rock houses. So this program will start for the next next year's field season in 2021 and it will involve some training that we're developing right now, but we need Native Plant Society's help. So if you go to the gorge and you want to adopt one of our rock shelters, please reach out to us. We're looking for next year's recruitment of volunteers for this pilot program. So we're hoping that this program will be a long-standing program. So please reach out if you want to get involved. And I just wanted to mention what I've noticed this past year and also what I've been doing at my own house. There's just been an increase. It seems interest in native plant guarding. I think it's always been there, but I think that the COVID has forced people at home. And I've talked to native plant nurseries who have mentioned to me that sales were actually up this past year. So I just think that's really cool. We got a lot of requests with Native Plant Society. Where do I buy native plants? So at the beginning of the year, we spent some time revamping our lists on the website. So they're up to date. Please check them. If you're a native plant nursery, make sure that you're on there and reach out to us if you're not and you need to get added to our list. But I've enjoyed also watching on Facebook the increase in seed exchange events this past year, particularly in the Louisville area where one group started a native plant seed exchange group that quickly grew over to 100 folks, actively networked to exchange native seed for native plant gardens. And Native Plant Society last year even held our first seed exchange event. So one of our tasks, some of our board members are working on policies and guidance for some of these seed exchanges that we think Native Plant Society can be a valuable resource. We possibly serve to connect these resources for local restoration projects as well. So with that, I will turn it over back to Jen and she will give an overview of our grants program. Hi again everybody. We are really proud of our grants program. I can see that it's not it's not a massive program but it also has supported a lot of students over the years and more on that in just a minute but can see one of our previous grant recipients has gone on and still having a career in botany. And I can see that I'm making Heidi just slightly uncomfortable sorry Heidi. But it's been a great resource over the years. And if we look at the next slide, you can get some idea of the types of projects that we have been funding and this is just by numbers but you can see that there's been a focus on a lot of the things that impact plant conservation. Some of it is basic research, such as flora's where you will just learn what is in an area some of it is management focused, either looking at invasive species or endangered species. We've had pollination biology, and then some more basic evolution. So these grants over the years have really just been student grants, but we have moved into having more opportunities for people other than just students. So we still have the student grants. And they have a $250 limit for undergraduates and a $500 limit for graduate students. One of the great things about these grants is that oftentimes one finds it difficult to find a grant that will pay for things like travel. And very often when doing botanical research travel is the thing that you need money for the most and so those. Those monies have come in handy for I know a lot of students I'm at Eastern Kentucky University but I'm plenty of other places to. And we have new opportunities now which is super exciting. They are not restricted to students but they fit in really well with our missions, our mission to first understand and advocate for native plant conservation. And so we have a native plant inventory grant. You don't have to be a student for that that has a $250 limit. And then we also have a rare and native plant restoration grant. And that's really exciting because that's a way that we can directly support people propagating plants that are of conservation interest. And it's very, it's better if you're interested in that kind of thing if you coordinate with Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves because right now they're serving as the clearinghouse for all of the information about rare plants they are the seat of the heritage program for our state. So if you are interested in those grants you should check out our webpage and there's a subsection about that there. And if you're interested in particular in the restoration grant, reach out to Tara, or Heidi in particular, so that you can put forth a successful proposal. And so that's really all I had to say about the grants but I think it's a really great program like I said I've seen it benefit a lot of students so far. And I think it's a great way for us to help also build a network, and get more people engaged in the work that needs to be done. And I'm going to turn it over to this is, is this you Jeff. Yeah, okay so Jeff, you are up. All right, and here we are. Thank you, Jen, appreciate it. Yeah, that's the, I'm the webmaster as well as being a board member of can PS I'm the webmaster. And I know most of you have have been to our website I've seen the website. In case you haven't, it's pretty easy to find K in PS dot, or G, and you'll see this welcome screen and the homepage. We have, I think some some really good information on the website but there's always room for improvement. So if anybody's interested in helping out with the website. Just shoot an email, or if you have any questions about the website or actually any questions at all about anything related to the can PS. The email address is KY plants at K in PS dot, or G, and I just put that in the chat window if anybody's wants to look that up. So any email if you're interested in helping on the website. Just shoot an email to that address. Also, I help out moderating on the Kentucky Native Plant Society Facebook group. That's become gosh we've got well over 5000 members on that group now. And so it's really an exciting place and good place to answer questions get IDs. If you see a plant take a picture of it and just post it there and say what is this, and usually you get an ID pretty quickly so that's that Instagram. We have an Instagram account that is managed by Emily Ellingson. Emily, do you want to pop in for a second and say anything about the Instagram account. Sure. It's the they handle the is KY native plant society. Haven't been updating it much lately, just because of the last year we've had. But I'm looking forward to putting more pictures of recommendations or reminders for events and photos and educational materials about all of Kentucky's native plants. Thank you. And let's see, I guess I'll just turn it back over to Tara for a minute. Okay, I just wanted to reiterate, Jeff mentioned Facebook. You know, Facebook's got a lot of pros and cons. The reason why I use it is because of the large botanical community. And there's, there's just so much communication with different plant folks across the country and world but particularly in the southeast so I know that, you know, there's a lot of, maybe not so good things about Facebook too but but I encourage you to join a lot of these plant groups on Facebook you'll learn a lot. So I'm going to pass it to Nick Koenig so that he could talk about our new lady slipper newsletter blog. Can you all hear me. Yep. Okay, I don't want to speak too long but I just wanted to give a quick update on our numbers recently through the past year Jeff sent me some data and I went through the data and in the past quarter we've had 4600 hits on our articles which is super exciting. In the past year we've seen a hit of 12,400 which is super exciting to see that many people reading articles online, especially during quarantine I think people are flocking more toward the internet so Susan and I are always looking for more writers so if you have a special interest that is botanical related. There are many different things that we do special interests, such as native plant spotlights book reviews invasive plant corners which is just a highlight on an invasive species that grows in our state that teaches people how to identify it all the way to management so they can remove it from their landscape if they would like. And I just wanted to highlight a few of those articles they've really gotten a lot of hits this year kudos to Susan Jeff, Dave Taylor and Tom. I'm not sure how to say his last name, Kenner. I think but the invasive plant corner, the bush honeysuckle article had 1900 hits in the past year which is super exciting to see that many people and maybe even if just 10 of them decided to remove some of it that's a success in my book so. And then also the how can you save the American chestnut had 1600 hits in the past year and then planting trees. We're doing it wrong had 1000 hits so a lot of really great articles that have been written so I ask anybody if they want to get an article out there are readers so a lot of people will be reading your work through the lady slipper so if you would like. Anything published, you can email us so I will drop our email in the chat and Susan I get those automatically so we will get back to you and we just usually provide little grammatical updates if we see any but then we'll get that posted and we send out a monthly newsletter. So if you'd like to join that you can go to our website as well to sign up for that newsletter. And there's the chat. Thanks Nick. Let me just jump in one other thing. For those of you have been longtime members, you may know this but the lady slipper. Has been published since 1986 we've, which is a newsletter of the KNPS were in this is volume 35th year that it's been published. At the beginning of 2020. We decided that rather than sending out lengthy, long email newsletters that it would be more appropriate. Now that we had a website to make the lady slipper a blog, so that we could post articles whenever somebody's got an article and keep it running. In addition to the blog, then we set up so that all of you who are on our mailing list, each month get a digest which lists the articles published in the previous month, the titles and a brief description of the article. So, subscribe to the KNPS newsletter there's a link on the front page of our website. And in addition to that the blog itself we on the website you'll see on the main menu. There's a link to the lady slipper you can go to the blog. There's a link to the archives of virtually every article ever published on the in the lady slipper since volume one 1986. So it's always fun to kind of browse through those so