 But I wanted to go ahead and introduce, I'm not sure which one of you guys is speaking first, but we have, okay. Emily Ellingson. She's a Northern transplant that we're loving having here. She has training in horticulture and she's been working at the University of Kentucky's arboretum in charge of their native plants. They're more the wild areas, right? I'm not sure. I have a terrible memory. And then probably Emily will clarify during her talk. And then we also have Heidi Brown writer, another Northern transplants loving it, one from Wisconsin, one from Minnesota here in Kentucky with us. And she's working for the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves and they're both going to speak to us about native plant propagation projects. Okay. And everyone see that. Great. Hi, I'm Emily. I'm the one from Minnesota. And I'm the curator and native plants collection manager at the arboretum state botanical garden of Kentucky. So I managed the walk across Kentucky native plant collection, which I'm going to talk about a little bit. But I, I'm going to switch gears a little bit, or I'm not going to go into a lot of projects. I'm sort of setting the stage for Heidi to talk about more projects in Kentucky. I'm going to talk about something I'm really interested in, which is conservation horticulture and how native plant propagation can enhance conservation goals. So I'm going to start with some definitions, which may seem kind of obvious, but setting the stage for what I'm going to talk about so horticulture is the art and science of developing producing commercializing and using high value cultivated crops so think medicinal food crops ornamental plants that you'll find in a nursery. This is a post, you know, botany, which is the academic study of plants and doesn't often have to do with improvement in marketing of plants. Plant propagation encompasses how we develop and produce these plants. And there are just a million ways and unique and creative ways to propagate plants. I've built on this, I'm also not going to go into that. But I will say that there's some common methods, especially if you want to increase genetic diversity or maintain genetic diversity in a conservation collection seed collecting or propagating plants from seed cuttings, layering grafting, micro propagation and tissue culture from small vegetative parts of plants. It's really neat, but any method that you're propagating plants with you, you'll select that based on goals of the species that you're working with. So, every species is different. Some require more treatment and more care than others and you really need to know the requirements and life history traits of those species. My very dictionary definition of conservation is the prevention and wasteful use of a resource. So in environmental and plant conservation, we aim to protect plants from extinction, maintain and restore habitats and plant communities, enhance ecosystem services and protect biological, biocultural diversity. And so conservation horticulture sort of brings all of these three things together and these these concepts together. It's horticulture that is concerned with integrated conservation and environmental awareness. What do I mean when I say integrated conservation and environmental awareness, I found this graphic that would be really helpful to look at we, when we say when I say integrated conservation. We describe the vast array of tools in our conservation toolkit. So, this graphic broadly defines these as research, for example, reproductive research and reproductive biology, genetic diversity studies, germination, phenology, interpretation, which is interpretation perhaps in botanical gardens, but also just what all conservation plant oriented groups doing outreach and like like this symposium. And then two main avenues of conservation, which is XC2 conservation and NC2 conservation, which I am going to go through in this next slide. XC2 conservation is onsite conservation, and this is conserving species in a habitat in which they are found. Examples of this would be preserving tracks of land and doing restoration, habitat restoration activities on the site. So the Rose Pagonia has another highlight here. This is that photo under the NC2. One is, it is endangered in Kentucky and that's growing in a bog in Letcher County. XC2 conservation is offsite conservation. So this is conserving species outside their natural habitat, perhaps in a botanical garden as an educational and research focused display. Perhaps in a seed bank, a pollen bank, or even employing more modern methods like cryopreservation, the deep freezing of plant tissues. And this, this photo shows false grama on his modium hispidysimum, which is also endangered in Kentucky and this is growing in a bed in the blue grass region of the walk across Kentucky at the arboretum, which I'm going to go into a little bit more later. The goal of conservation horticulture is to maintain live plant plant collections that are genetically representative of natural populations and this is going to be really important if the plants that we propagate are actually going to be used in restoration activities. So I managed the native plant collection at the arboretum and it's called the Walk Across Kentucky and it is called that because it represents the seven physiographic regions of Kentucky, which you can see on that, that Kentucky map down there. The colors actually correspond to each region that is in the Walk Across Kentucky. It's really cool about this and what, what makes the arboretum and XC2 plant collection is that all of the plants are wild collected. So we go out collect seed, maybe collect plants depending on the propagation method we're using. We grow them at the, at the university. So we're affiliated with the University of Kentucky. So this, this photo is here there's a magnolia macrophila big leaf magnolia seedling and hydrangea. It's an arborescent the wild hydrangea. And then we actually put those in the landscape. And this is conserving local genotypes, and it's a conservation collection that safeguard species so we're not we may not necessarily then be propagating plants from the arboretum and growing in the ground. But we are sort of just keeping them for future reference and for research that can be done easily at the arboretum. A conservation collection like a really true conservation collection is an XC2 collection that supports species survival and reduces the extinction risk of globally and regionally rare species. This has to have depth and breadth so when collecting plants you need to have try to capture the diversity of the population range and also have enough plants to be able to to keep that going in a in a closed setting like a greenhouse. So I really enjoyed this quote and one plant in one pot is a certain rather limited challenge which I can definitely attest to just trying to propagate a very wide range of plants at the arboretum to grow 200 plants for an indefinite period and maintain the genetic diversity among them it's not the same challenge 200 times over. It is a quantitatively and qualitatively different challenge and a difficult one. The picture on the right there is the conservation collection of fissure plants from the Atlanta Botanical Garden which was somewhere that we visited in March with the Plant Conservation Conference, the Southeast Plant Conservation Partners in Plant Conservation Project. I want to go through the just to give everyone an idea of the sort of things that you have to think about when propagating plants for conservation and the challenges that you know this quote sort of highlights. So this is from the Center for Plant Conservation, which is a really amazing organization. So what you have to do is collect material, and you have to know your species, you have to collect enough material, and from enough populations that actually captures to diversity. You also can't collect from more than 10% of a seed crop in any year and no more than five out of 10 years. So I wanted to talk about this because it's really important that we are collecting in a sustainable way, and we're capturing the diversity of species so that it can be, we can better put plants into the, maybe back into the wild that will survive and flourish. This no more than 10% of a seed crop thing kind of goes out the window when you're talking about plant rescues so if you're a spot is slated for development and you need to actually rescue all those plants or if there's a very very small population you might change some of these parameters but this is a general rule. You have to propagate and maintain this material. So we always want to seed bank things to keep XC2 collections in multiple places. We do have excellent record keeping. And something that is really interesting to me is that when propagating and growing plants. And something that's pretty different from the horticulture industry, you actually don't want to do artificial selection. So, whereas in the horticulture industry you might select for something that's the most floriferous or the most vigorous when you're collecting plants for conservation, you want to avoid favoring large seeds or vigorous plants and you want to collect from the short plants the tall plants all sample from the whole range of genetic diversity, allow time for all seeds to germinate and how it's in monetary for for health and that's that's something that's just really interesting to me. And it's going to be more useful in your conservation collection. And the last step and arguably one of the most important is using the material. We the the final goal of a conservation collection is to be useful and that can mean a number of things. It can mean placing whole plants and XC2 collections, for example in Botanic Gardens and seed banks. It can mean reintroducing plants. So this is when plants are grown and then transplant into a habitat and location where they've been found perhaps supplementing populations are placed in an extirpated population can mean trans locating plants. So when plants are transplanted to habitats where they are found but perhaps not a location where they've been found. And then the other more the last more contentious item is assisted migration which is the human assisted movement of species in response to climate change so this is actually involving moving species outside of their recorded range in order to prepare for the changing climate. A whole seminar I think could be or day could be devoted to talking about assisted migration. So conservation horticulture and the propagation of native plants where otherwise is directly related to conservation target goals from the global strategy for plant conservation. So these goals these goals claim to are aimed to have 75% of known threatened plant species conserved in C2 and XC2. And then importantly, their target 16 advocates for regional, national and international levels of cooperation. So examples of this would be the Center for Plant Conservation. The Botanical Gardens Conservation International and various plant conservation alliances, known as PCAs. So PCAs encourage partnerships among many different institutions use botanic gardens, plant societies, universities, federal and state agencies. And this is an order to coordinate and coordinate plant conservation by sharing expertise and resources. What's really exciting is that Kentucky is starting a plant conservation alliance and you can see there's a lot of work going to going on in Kentucky. And so now I'm going to hand it over to Heidi Bronrider, who's the botanist for Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves and the TNPS vice president to talk about some of these, some of these projects. Can you all see my screen. So, yeah, I am Heidi Bronrider. My talk today is going to focus on seed collection and propagation projects that we are currently working on in Kentucky. But first I wanted to touch base a little on how we've actually been able to accomplish these projects through our Kentucky Plant Conservation Alliance that Emily just mentioned, as well as Kentucky Nature Preserves Conservation Section. The focus of the past several years has been to build a larger botanical community in Kentucky, and trying to bring that community together in order to more effectively deal with some of the conservation issues we have going on in our state. State Plant Conservation Alliance started in 2016 as a committee of the Kentucky Native Plant Society, and then it took a step further in 2019 with the creation of our Plant Conservation Section within Kentucky Nature Preserves. So now the Plant Conservation Section acts more formally as the KPCA with each of our botanists being a coordinator of the Alliance. Since 2018, we've hired on six new staff members into that state program, which is a huge milestone for Kentucky Plant Conservation efforts. These steps have allowed us to increase our coordination among Kentucky Plant Conservationists, as well as increase the number of Plant Conservation projects that we're actually able to accomplish. And I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge all of the work that's been accomplished by Tara Littlefield, who has literally been the backbone to all of this progress that's been done in recent years for Kentucky Botany. Here she is presenting at the 2020 Southeastern Partners in Plant Conservation Conference, also known as SEPCOM, at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. And this was actually a really great opportunity for us to formally present on some of our current projects, as well as building new partnerships with organizations that are working towards similar goals. So on to some of the projects that we're working on. As Emily already went over the different types of projects, I will describe some of the examples of the projects that we've actually done. So we have an orchid conservation project. And you can see why orchids are so easily loved. They are very charismatic in a diverse group of plants. But unfortunately, we have a lot of orchid species in the state that need our help. So we partnered with North American Orchid Conservation Center to do research on some of our rarest orchids. So in 2019 and 2020, we worked on the Rose Pagonia, the Small White Lady Slipper, the Kentucky Lady Slipper, and the White Fringeless Orchid. Some of the aspects of this project included seed banking, all four species, a genetic analysis, as well as mycorrhizal research and banking of the mycorrhizae that are associated with these orchids. And on the slide is a photograph of a root crypt clipping of an orchid. And this is part of the research being conducted to determine the associated mycorrhizal relationships with each of these orchid species. But so far, we've only been successful in determining the associated mycorrhizal fungi with the White Fringeless Orchid. An important long-term goal of this project is the propagation of these orchids so we can restore them into suitable habitats in some of our natural areas. And you can see in one of the photos is actually a baby White Fringeless Orchid that is currently being propagated at Atlanta Botanical Garden. So listed here are just some of the rare plant species that we have collected seeds of in 2019 and 2020. It's not completely up to date, but there are over 30 plant species on this list that we will send off to get propagated and hopefully get back on the landscape one day to boost their current populations. Some of our partners for propagation include drop seed nursery, native plant seed nursery, ironweed native plant nursery, Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens, Round Stone Native Seed and Atlanta Botanical Garden. One of the nice things about our seed collecting project is it can be easily incorporated into many of the other ongoing projects we have at Nature Preserves. For instance, our roadside pollinator project that Tony discussed earlier, with roadside providing such an important habitat for remnant grassland communities, we have been able to collect many of our rare plant seeds while doing this project. For example, Wild Blue and Nego, Royal Catchfly and Purple Milkweed are all seeds that we were able to collect this year while surveying Kentucky road sites. So of the seeds that I've mentioned so far, they target specific rare plants, but this year we also started to target several rare plant communities. And this whole plant project stemmed out of the lack of a local seed supply for some of our restoration projects at Nature Preserves. It's very important to use seeds collected locally rather than bringing them in from outside of the state because local seeds will maintain the genetic diversity within a population, as well as increase the long term success rate of these restoration projects. Currently, we are targeting various grassland communities across Kentucky. These habitats have become increasingly degraded and mostly lost due to human activities. And now mostly, they only exist as unsustainably small habitats. So we intend to collect seeds from numerous plant species that are associated with these communities simply in order to create a seed stock that can be used to restore degraded sites in the future. The three grasslands that we are targeting include the Bairns of the Penny Royal Plains, which are a mosaic of glades, tall grass prairies and oak savannas. They support species like the Carolina Lexper and the Glade Violet and Limestone Painflower, but they have been largely lost due to agriculture and pastureland and fire suppression. The Bluegrass Limestone Glades and Barrens are naturally open grasslands and savannas on dry rocky slopes. They support species like the Indian Paintbrush that you see here, the small white lady slipper and the federally endangered Shorts Goldenrod. The Outer Bluegrass Glades support our federally listed and endemic species Kentucky Gladecrest, but these landscapes have been lost due to development as well as agriculture and pasture. And then the last grassland that we're targeting is the Southern Cumberland Plateau Grasslands, which consist of deep soil prairies. They have a lot of sun loving fire dependent plants. And historically they consisted of a complex of pine oak savannas, sandstone prairies and barrens and glades, but today they're mostly restricted to roadsides and power line corridors. The long term goal of this plant community seed collection project would be that once degraded sites have been restored using these seed stocks, we can then introduce some of the rare plants that we've propagated back onto the landscape along with their associated species. Another important project is seed banking. As it provides the insurance against the extinction of these species, we've partnered with Missouri Botanical Garden and Atlanta Botanical Garden to seed bank several of our federally listed plants, including the globe ladder pod, the white frung just orchid and the Kentucky Gladecrest. And most of our propagation and reintroductions we've worked on up to this point have been federally listed plants, but as part of the Plant Conservation Alliance, we have been able to broaden our scope to include state listed plants and endemic species such as the Woodlilies and the Kentucky Clover. Woodlilies occur in the southern Cumberland Plateaus and their habitat is restricted to the power lines and roadsides of the Daniel Boone National Forest. Its populations in Kentucky have declined by more than 90% in the past 40 years, and this is due to habitat loss, lack of fire, mowing as well as excessive herbivory. So we've been working with the Forest Service to restore populations of the Woodlilies as well as its habitat. So we have more than 200 seedlings currently growing in a greenhouse that drops seed native plant nursery. And our hope is to transplant these this coming spring. But that's dependent on if we can get a prescribed burden on the nature preserve where we'd like to put them. Getting prescribed burn in prescribed burns in can be tricky. It's very weather dependent and also trickier with COVID as it requires large groups of people to conduct the burn. But we are hopeful that we can get this happening in spring. We are currently working on several projects related to the Kentucky Clover, which is an extremely rare endemic species to Kentucky. It has been seed-banked. Genetical analysis is currently being conducted at EKU, and research is being conducted to determine the best propagation methods for this species. Currently, it is being propagated at Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, and these plants will hopefully be used to boost population numbers in the future. Shorts Goldenrod is a federally endangered plant that occurs around Blue Lick State Park area. Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens propagated plants for us from seed, and this past fall we were able to put over 100 plants at Clay WMA in collaboration with KDFWR. Clay WMA is close to Blue Licks, and it has similar soils and habitats for Shorts. And we also collected more seeds this year to get propagated, and we hope these plants will go into areas that are actively being restored right now near Blue Licks on nature preserves properties. A globe bladder hot pod is another federally endangered plant we've worked with. At Cove Springs Park in Frankfurt, Kentucky, seeds were dispersed to create new populations of this plant. And it took several years, but population numbers are reaching sustainable levels, and successful new populations like this are a great pathway towards the recovery of this species. Running Buffalo Clovers, another federally endangered species we're working with. It was proposed for delisting in 2019 by US Fish and Wildlife Service, but that hasn't happened just yet. From 2008 to 2010, there were several introductions of this plant in Madison County in partnership with EKU and Blue Grass Army Depot. And there were also introductions at Shaker Town and on a few private farms. We're currently, we currently have plants growing at Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, that we hope to transplant to Lower Hards Creek State Nature Preserve in Clark County this coming spring. And in the last couple months, we've sent off cream-junctioned seeds to Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden to try to propagate. We are hoping to reintroduce these at a few sites around Blue Licks State Park that are currently being restored by nature preserves. So, looking forward, we still have a lot of work to do to further our state alliance. Several steps need to be taken, including formalizing the process in which someone actually becomes a KPCA member. We also need to create foundational documents that state our missions and what projects we're currently undertaking. We need to recruit a larger volunteer base as well as building more partnerships. Partnerships are really the key to our success right now. And for propagations, we want to reach out to more local seed exchange groups in hopes of perhaps getting volunteers to propagate species for us, as well as we also want to develop more guidance on the proper collection of rare seeds. And here are some of the dozens of partners we have collaborated with. I just want to thank all of them for working with us on our plant conservation projects here in Kentucky. We really wouldn't be able to do it without them. And thank you for listening to my presentation. I see a few questions came through on the chat window. However, I can only speak for myself to say that I really, really want to eat lunch right now. So, perhaps we can address some of those questions in the chat window. And because we have our keynote speaker, Ellen weekly at 1230. So we have a very short break.