 This next talk is by both, Tara, you have a little bit that you're going to talk about too, but yeah, a little bit. Okay, but we're going to start out with Mason Brock. I keep hearing wonderful things about him. I knew him when he was an undergraduate at EKU and he is way, way, way, way better of a botanist than I am, so I'm excited to hear a little bit more about what he's been up to. So, Mason, you're at the, let's see, at Austin P, right? That's right. Right. Why don't you take it away. All right, well hello everybody. And so let me know if you have any sort of audio or graphical issues here before we get too far in the presentation. Let me go on and start screen sharing. Let's see here from, how about this? Is that working for everybody? Good, good, good, good, good. Okay, so let me start from the top again. I'm Mason Brock here at Austin P State University. And we are in herbarium, which as a lot of you know already is an archive of plant material. And part of my job here is to process incoming, incoming specimens that we get. And part of that we have discovered many interesting species, new for Kentucky in the herbarium specimens. And so I want to emphasize when I'm talking about new exciting with Kentucky Botanical Discoveries, everything I'm talking about today is not a new species to science like Alan Weakley was talking about in his talk before. These are instead species discovered for the first time or maybe the second or third time within the political boundaries of Kentucky. And that is still a very interesting, important thing to map where these species are. Really knowing where the species are is a big part of the battle for conservation. We can't conserve what we don't know. And just the very basic question of what grows where is absolutely fundamental to all of conservation. There are so many sites that are have extremely rich diversity, which, if it wasn't almost by happenstance that some botanist stumbled into them, or maybe not happenstance but perhaps a dedicated search to find them. So those species would not even be known to be in the region. So I'm going to first show you this map from John Cortez on the Biot of North America program website. And if you're like me, you look at this map and you get really excited, because what this map shows is each county's approximate percentage of completeness. And that is the approximate number of species which we think are in the county and versus the number that have been found. So, for those of you who know Kentucky really well you might be looking at your home county let's say you're in Jefferson County in Louisville and you see a 98. Or if you're in Fayette County in Lexington you also see a 98. That is approaching 100% completion. And even though the 100 in Madison County, if there is a county with no less than two or barrier that would be a Berea College and EKU would have the highest percent in the state. But really for the Eastern US in general Kentucky is remarkably low, which means there's a lot left to discover there's a lot of, as the saying goes a lot of meat on the bones still for a botanist out there, looking to make interesting discoveries. So, a couple of areas which have a notable gaps. So I'm going to highlight one area, and that would be Northeast Kentucky, we can see a lot of counties in the 20s and 30s and 50s and 40s there as far percentage goes. So, this Northeast Kentucky is going to have a field day. So, unfortunately, I'm in the opposite part of the state. I am located in Clarksville, Tennessee, which is on the Tennessee Kentucky line in what sort of the southwestern south central part of the state. And we also have a lot of counties that have potential, especially along the Tennessee Kentucky line. I'm just going to rattle off a few counties you may not know all of these but we can see we got a Simpson County at 37 Monroe County at 39. It looks like, is that a Cumberland County at 37. There's a lot of areas in the southern part of the state also that need exploration. And so, there are two main ways that a new species for Kentucky are discovered or new species in any state are discovered, and it's pretty straightforward. You can do it through herbarium specimens. That is us, you look at a specimen and it's either been not identified or misidentified and you identify it and that would be a new record, or you do on the ground exploration. And so the records which me and other botanists have found over the past five years or so have been a combination of this. It is true that most of our news, undescribed tax of the science are now being found through herbarium specimens. But as far as county records that's still mostly just on the ground exploration we need more boots on the ground we need people out there. Braving the ticks braving the braving the heats braving the rain and braving knocking on doors to ask permission, even in houses that may not look too friendly. We need people doing doing the legwork. And so here's an example of a species which I can't claim credit for finding but just some great species for on the ground exploration mountain maple. So here's a record from a cave entrance at Buck Creek Pulaski County. We need people on the ground finding these things. So let me first start with herbarium specimens so I'm located like I said in Austin Peace State University. Now you may be wondering why in the world is somebody located in Tennessee, talking about Kentucky botany. Well the truth is Austin P is a Kentucky based or barium. We are physically located in Tennessee, but we have more Kentucky specimens that we do Tennessee specimens we have about 51,000 or barium specimens from Kentucky, compared to only 38,000 Tennessee specimens. So if you double check this before I say it too often, but I think we may be the largest Kentucky majority or barium in the United States, although EKU may may be at least extremely close to us on that. The reason we have so many Kentucky based. We have so many Kentucky specimens is that about five years ago we acquired all of the Western Kentucky University material, the material from the former Louisville or barium, and the Max Medley private collection of his all this Kentucky specimens just in the past four years, which doubled our size, and in total was about 68,000 specimens and the vast majority of it coming from Kentucky. So I threw a name out there Max Medley. Let me just briefly tell you about Max who he is, and why he is the source of so many of the new Kentucky records that we've discovered in your barium. Max is retired and lives in Georgia but he, when he was in Kentucky was one of the most prolific Kentucky collectors in the latter half of the 20th century. From about 1978 to 1993, he amassed a private collection of buyer estimates 22,000 specimens, which is the size of some public or barrier. And it's not just that he was collecting just roadside weeds he really did target species that are both rare or disjunct or of taxonomically difficult groups. So you go through Medley specimens and it's just specimen after specimen is a highly inch of a high botanical interest. And so of course we're going to find many interesting species within within his private collection. This was a very difficult task to process. Max Medley is not joining us on this conference because he is extremely old school and does not use a computer in any way shape or form. And so as such, his specimens notebooks were handwritten. And then we just acquired them and so I had to transcribe his labels from the handwritten notebooks and mount the specimens WKU did a good job, but did not have a dedicated funding source to process his specimens after being at WKU for 20 years. Only about 25% of Max Medley specimens had been processed. And so we really tried to put our the pedal to the gas on that when they arrived at awesome P. And at this point, approximately 98% have been processed there are a few loose ends. We are actually missing his 1994 notebook so if anybody can locate that let us know. Um, so let's go through some of the species from WKU that that not just Max but other botanists had have found and so the species I'm presenting are all either new records or highly significant records that have just come to light in the past four or five years or so. I didn't quite know when a good cutoff would be but I feel like four or five years is a good cutoff for when a record is no longer, no longer fresh enough to present at a conference like this. So let's, we're going to get kind of in the weeds here but I know a lot of you people are botanists. So you're going to enjoy this part of the presentation. So I'm just going to go through species by species, some of the really cool finds that we found. So the first one is actually not by Max Medley, but by a person named GP Johnson in 1980, they were doing a complete flora of a small Cedar Glade located within the city limits of bowling green. They collected this original on and in 1980 would have called this original on Strygosis, rather boring collection for a limestone Cedar Glade they probably rolled their eyes when they collected it they were like oh god we got to, we got to at least document this original on Strygosis for this Cedar Glade but of course now we know through the more advanced taxonomy that this is original on Alice Sony I the only known specimen of the Cedar Glade endemic ever documented within the state of Kentucky. And I believe the northern most known record. And until recently, this was considered a variety of Strygosis, which would have been called a Ridgeron Strygosis Friday, Calcicola, I believe, but at the species name it's, it's now Ridgeron Alice Sony I just described by Brian Keener I believe in the past two or three years. You can see it has a different growth habit, it's a perennial it has these sort of very short rhizomes branching off from the base when you, as soon as I was flipping through the incoming WQ specimens as soon as I saw this, I realized what a significant discovery it was. And I've been to this site, and not been able to relocate the plants and my understanding from historical aerial fly, fly over photography is that the. Hold on the lights went up behind here. Is that the Cedar Glade has declined in size by about perhaps two thirds since 1980 remember it's in the city limits of bowling green. There's currently an unfinished road leading directly into the Cedar Glade. So someone really needs to go here and find this thing. Oh, when I said I visited the site I actually visited the site before I knew that this. I was there so I wasn't really looking for it on the site has not been revisited since the discovery of Ridgeron Alice Sony I within bowling green. So that's that's a huge fine for Kentucky a possibly. Cedar Glade endemic tax on very cool. So the next are some of Max Medley's great finds and Max Medley, even though he may not have identified things to the species level he knew it was interesting. He had something. So this is one of those cases where he cut to this beaks edge ring Cospera grass Salenta. He only identified it as ring Cospera. It's a pretty technical group. You need, you need good floras you need a microscope to identify it. So I examine this specimen and found out pretty quickly this is a new species for Kentucky ring Cospera grass Salenta. This is a species. This is a genus primarily known from the southeastern coastal plain where it's very the genus is very diverse. We don't have too many species here in Kentucky. So it's good to see good to see one. And it's right where you would expect it to be the very southern Kentucky border of the Cumberland plateau in McCurry County which is our hotbed for a lot of these boggy open pine savanna type species. So this is exactly where you expect to see it. And if you want to find this in the field you really it's not too hard you don't need a microscope though you can just look for kind of long thin wispy arching growth, and also in a sandy boggy habitat and you probably will find ring Cospera grass Salenta. Another example the site has not been revisited since we found this specimen. It's a little far away from me here at Austin P, but I would love for somebody, some botanist Tara to go there and find this thing. So, some specimens are found in her barrier, but others have been coming to us in new and exciting ways which they did not come before so social media has really changed the way plant records are being discovered. So both state records and county records. It is some ways it is democratizing the mapping of rare species and so it's no longer us botanists in our either either in our state agencies or our barium hideaways who are doing these discoveries. So this is a study with internet access and an iPhone can make discoveries. And we've had a lot of interesting discoveries by one particular person I'm going to give a shout out to a Mr Frank Lynn of Logan County, he is a farmer and nature enthusiast. He in his upper age has really dedicated a lot of time and effort to both birding and to botany. And just with his postings in Facebook and I naturalist we have made three significant discoveries of for Kentucky in the past two or three years I'm going to highlight all three of those. As well. Oh, and just just a quick mention, speaking of how the internet is changing things as of this summer, Austin P is now completely online so you can view all of our specimens more more ways the internet has is democratizing access to botanical knowledge. So let's start with the first species of what I'm calling Frank lens Logan County gold mine. And this would be trillions to many of a new trillion for Kentucky. When I met Frank in person he mentioned that he believed he had three different species of trillium on his property, which I, you know I'm thinking of the trillium that would be in Logan County and that makes sense to me I didn't really didn't really raise any red flags that he would have three species of trillium. And so we're taking the spring walk through the woods and he shows me the first trillium, which is trillium. And then he's, I'm sorry, sorry, no, the first trillium is trillium cuneatum, and I'm like okay that's pretty normal then he shows me some trillium flexi piece, and then he shows me what he says is he believes to be trillium recurve item. And it is actually this it's a new new trillium for Kentucky of the northern most known populations. It's found on mesic limestone bluffs of the Red River watershed and some of its tributaries. And at first I thought this would be a very local kind of a fluke thing here in Logan County but in the past two springs I have hit these watersheds hard and found that it is surprisingly common in Kentucky. So I've got it now in Todd County as well. And it's almost certainly in neighboring Simpson County. The issue is these corridors of Calcarias Forest have been very poorly botanized in the past and they are located entirely on private land except for a single small park, small city park in Stewart County. So really all it took was botanists venturing into these new new areas for the first time to make discoveries. The second and probably really the most important as far as global conservation find in Franklin's Logan County goldmine is this is this tick tree foil called Desmodium ochrolucum. There's a lot of Desmodium diversity in in this region. And so a good good for Frank and his eagle eye for noticing something was different about this Desmodium that he saw. And first off, the place where he was looking, he knew was a some sort of a Zarek, maybe maybe submersive, some dry prairie remnant of sorts we had species such as Desmodium cesiophilium and asclepius veridiflora and so already those were sort of been like oh there could be something here. And indeed there was. This is not a new record for Kentucky. It was found just a two or three years before for the first time in the mammoth cave area so he we just missed that one but it is the second record for Kentucky. And perhaps most interestingly the first record for the entire Big Bear and penny Royal Plain region proper, excluding the more dissected hilly areas around mammoth cave. And is only the second record in the flat karst penny Royal Plain region since 1942. We have one or barium specimen here at Austin P collected from south of the state line and Tennessee from that region. In the early 1940s, which we'd always wondered, you know, what kind of habitat it grew in on where exactly it was there was very poor, very poor information on the label but the specimen was undeniable. And so this is a G three globally rare taxa discovered by Frank simply posting on Facebook, I need some help with this Desmodium ID, and it snowballed from there. And then the third species and Frank's Logan County gold mine is a little a little bit of a more complicated back story. This is a hydrofilm Virginia anum. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest this is only the second verified or barium specimen for Kentucky since 1908. The primary reason for that is as of weeklies 2020 flora, it is perhaps suggested to treat the Appalachian entities as a distinct species named hydrofilm at Trantham distinguished by its deeper purple flowers and more pubescent stems. This is still a rare species for the state but there are numerous records from the pine and Cumberland black mountain area, including some of the more dissected gorges around the big south fork. So, once you segregate the more Appalachian hydrofilm you're left with this other species of hydrofilm which is more of a Midwestern taxa, and once once you split them out that way this may be the second collection only record for Kentucky that Frank found again by using I naturalist. This species in Kentucky is played with what I'm calling floristic hearsay that is unverified site records offhand references and other just obscure reports without anything to verify which is important because at least some of the specimens I've seen of this are unverified as a facility of bipenetipida. So, no less than five counties have potential records that are either unverified or maybe unverifiable, and those those would be some bluegrass counties such as Anderson Jefferson Lincoln and Woodford but also some western Kentucky counties such as Henderson and the Kraken. One of these is actually an I naturalist record. But there are strange circumstances around us which I really want to see it in the field before I believe it to be true. So some of the other new or new ish finds for Kentucky. So we, this is the part of the about native plants, but there is always as Alan mentioned the question of nativity. And so some of our records if you find it new for the state, you may not always know is this really a new native species, or is this something else. So, here are basically the three options you have when you find what appears to be a new species for the state. Is the species native and simply overlooked by past botanists. Is the species native and naturally and recently expanding its range. So when you have hundreds of species for a flora you would expect over some amount of time at least some of them could be naturally expanding their range probably not too many, but it's something to consider. And then the third option is this native elsewhere in the US but only expanding to the state in disturbed or unnatural habitats and we have a fancy word for that is botanist called advent of. An example of species and Houstonia my crantha I found this for the first time in Kentucky about two years ago in the vicinity of mammoth cave National Park. It looks a whole lot like Houstonia pucilla, but it is not pubescent. It's an annual and its flower is pure white, and it's kind of a daintier shorter succulent looking thing. So this is a very small species that's my finger right there you can see how small it is the very small annual, it has a pretty brief bloom window. Um, so that would be one way to think well maybe it's just naturally native and overlooked, but then again I found it just in a mode area, where kind of a the lawn of a park or some and a cemetery. Maybe maybe it's not native but then again at the mode area was right by a disturbed sandy barren habitat. What do you do with this question, you know my guess is this is either native native or expanding or merely advent of we just need more, more data to answer that question. Another species though, um, that are interesting new discoveries, they have different, different circumstances so here on the left, you can see a mausoleum butler eye until 2017 of this western species was unknown or practically unknown in the state. And I have documented it in six Kentucky counties, all in the big barrens region. But every record is from a highly disturbed park or roadside, usually in closely mowed areas. And I found this species in my front yard this spring, not a good sign for it being a native component of the flora, my verdict, not a true Kentucky native and only advent of from the far western part of the state. Interesting taxa is a nemophila a phyla. This is long known to be native in the far western part of the state along the Mississippi River bluffs. The spring I discovered it in two counties in the big barrens region, Todd and Logan in the penny royal plane, quite a bit disjunct east from where it was previously known in the state. One site is on roadside gravel, but the other is on a limestone bluff growing with spring ephemerals such as cardamony de secta. You don't normally see an advent of species growing on a mesic limestone bluff with spring ephemerals. My verdict is native to south central Kentucky and overlooked. Hi Mason. Yes. I'm sorry to interrupt. We have a lot of people on the meeting and we were supposed to end up to are you close to wrapping up. I'm extremely close to wrapping up. Excellent. Sorry to interrupt. That's fine. And then lastly, we have a speech, a new species for Kentucky, which is not native, no doubt this spring. I found unfortunately, a sartomium fortunee I growing on the rocky bluffs of the Red River, it's an Asian fern. So bad news. Well, I should probably wrap it up right there. Since we are running out of time, the last species of note is Visio minuta flora, the small flower vetch. And it was found right where the state line and the Cumberland River bluff meets. So I thought to myself, hmm, maybe I should go look there see what I find and sure enough, look in the most obvious place that's this that's my that's my pro tip for the day to find rare species. There it was. Visio minuta flora. That was a quick, hopefully, hopefully not too long overview of some of the new and new ish records for Kentucky over the past three or four years and I think I may have talked too long because I forgot that Tara was wanting to go a little bit too on this. So we may have to take the questions for the chat. Sorry about that Tara. That's okay Mason. I like hearing you talk way better than one. Follow your two nights. I was definitely taking notes because there was some things that we need to add to our database that you were mentioning. Yeah. So, we are running a little late. I was just going to briefly mention three really cool plants that were discovered this year. And that that we're really excited about. And, and I will speed through it it won't take more than five ish minutes. And then we can wrap up the presentation, or the symposium. So let's see you got to stop your screen sharing in order for me to screen share I think, Mason. We'll stop. Okay, I see. All this virtual button question is still, still getting used to it. Okay. Not what I wanted to start with. Why did this go to the first. Okay, so. Can everyone hear me. I cannot see anybody. Yeah. Okay, great. Thanks. Okay, so, if you remember way back in the beginning of the symposium, Devin mentioned, putting out some plots and some Eastern Highland rim wet meadows, also called the zero hydric prairies. And some nature preserve botanists have been looking at this area for several decades now. It's very understudied. This is just private land and it's really agged up as well. So I think a lot of the original NAI surveys for this Eastern Highland rim area. We're not really extensive just because of the private land situation and the extent of all the agriculture and just not knowing exactly what was really interesting there so these green polygons are are I ran an analysis of soil type for these zero hydric prairies and this would have been the extent the historic extent of, of where they could have been. And, into my next slide. There's a historic map from the late 1700s by James things that indicates these glade areas and if anyone knows that of Hazeldale it's open to the public it's a county site it has the only protected remnant of these zero hydric prairies. I wanted to give a shout out to Martina Hines ecologist at nature preserves who discovered the second highest quality site of zero hydric prairies. Several decades ago with with sundews, and also for sharing her love of zero hydric prairies with me so I've become obsessed with them over the past 10 years or so. And have also conducted surveys with Martina at the Russell County site. So, last year. We found a really high, high quality zero hydric prairie on private land. It was not known in previous NAI surveys and it's strange at a series of events that led to this discovery Tony Ramona was with me it was actually his first day at work. And, and it has a whole slew of really interesting species so we went through the NAI process of, or the heritage process of once we find something really cool and high quality we try to protect it. Lots of landowner contacts and trying to find out who owns what and, you know, pva all that kind of stuff. But really cool species composition there was a county a record of dross for the intermediate. So really cool stuff so I continued on the side to conduct surveys of this area over the past year. And this year just actually passed in past in July. I found a really cool state record called sebacea quadrangula, the four angled rose gentian in one of these zero hydric prairies it was really exciting and unexpected because it's showy and you would think that something really showy in a in a sebacea that would have been known and, and this, this record was actually the first time it has been documented west of the Appalachian Mountains. When I first found this I sent it to Alan and Bruce Sora so I appreciate all of their help and identifications and verifications of this. I remember sending it to Alan, this photo of my finger there and him mentioning how I needed to really clean my fingernails. So I really got to think about my my hand shots with these flower photos sometimes. But it's it's this site in particular really does on the point of how how tenuous these these these really important sites are. I found it in late July and less than a week later, the majority of the site was mowed by the landowner. Before I could really meet with him to really delve into the importance of this site. So, you know, long story short, we've been working now with that landowner and some surrounding areas doing more surveys and doing a lot of the things that you heard in other talks, like seed collection and propagation and trying to protect this site. So that's a really cool one that we're really excited about. I'll mention two other ones. Computer to have a list Barbados so that's a that is a record that was discovered by Devin Rogers. Maybe a month ago. So this is a site or this is a plant that was known from Kentucky it's it's globally rare and in the Fort Campbell area and we had not seen it for several decades, despite some efforts to look for it so Devin was was looking for specifically potentially for this plant so he found it on a roadside actually in a cemetery so we're really excited it was labeled as is extirpated in Kentucky so we're really excited that that this plant has come back from the dead it was growing out of a cemetery. Dwayne Estes and his crew at the southeast and grasslands initiative have been doing a lot of work on this, the species in the southeast and, and oftentimes you see on this left part of the slide it's just vegetated. It's just in vegetation form in overgrown woods it's a grassland species so we're hoping to find more of that in the future, and then I will end with a new find and this is also a tie to I naturalist. So I got an email from one of my friends, Laura Darnell, who's a botanist in the Louisville area. And she had found on I naturalist prices potato bean records that she was pretty she was thinking yeah this is this seems like prices potato bean. It was identified as the more common apiose Americana. So this is a federally listed species, this is a really rare. Really rare species that only occurs in a couple of states. So, we immediately, it was definitely apiose pricing and we reached out to Courtney who had found it, and it's just a really interesting story that's kind of snowballing into into different conservation strategies she found it on her property in the Bowling Green area along the Green River, and this is the first time that this species has been seen in that area in over 100 years since that Sadie price first discovered it so Sadie price is a famous Kentucky botanist from the late 1800s. So, we're really excited about this record, all of our other prices potato bean records are in far Western Kentucky so this is extremely significant fun. It's going to really increase our, our inventories on the Green River over the next couple of years for sure. So, this is just a video of the Green River. I spent several in the past couple of years doing a lot of Green River surveys and writing on boats chasing eagles. So this is just a preview of what's to come looking for prices potato bean over the next couple of years. So I will end it at that and try to wrap up this meeting. It's been an awesome event. I think that we've had a lot of really great talks, lots of interested folks. And yeah, let's reach out if you want to get more involved with native plant society visit our website, reach out to nature preserve folks if you want to get involved in more of our projects. And yeah, I guess I apologize for running over 20 minutes and reach out to us if next year we're still going to be doing this virtual thing for a little while longer so if you would like to see more of these types of webinars or anything like that just let us know. I think that that's probably where we're what we're going to be planning over the next at least six months, a few more, not of a longer symposium but maybe more of a shorter webinars. So thank you all for attending and I hope you will have a good rest of your December.