Tag: botanical timeline

By Ron Jones, Foundation Professor Emeritus, Eastern Kentucky University with assistance from Tara Littlefield 

This botanical timeline is a continuation of the series that appeared in The Lady-Slipper in five installments from 2005 to 2008:  

• 20(2) – Prehistoric times up to 12,000 years ago 
• 21(2) – 12,000 years ago to 1900; 22(3)—1900 to 1980 
• 22(3) – 1980 to 1998 
• 23(1) – 1998 to mid-2008 
• 2008 to 2014 

The goal is to highlight major events in the history of Kentucky botany, including new discoveries, important publications, changes in agricultural developments, major changes or upgrades of herbaria, developments or changes for the Kentucky Native Plant Society, and the retirements or deaths of people that made major contributions to Kentucky botany. Much more has happened and will continue to happen; follow-up lists and updates are encouraged. 

2015—Flora of the Southern and Mid-Atlantic States Working Draft of 21 May 2015  

Alan S. Weakley University of North Carolina Herbarium (NCU) North Carolina Botanical Garden University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Area covered is indicated in map below. See update below for 2022. 

2015—Guide to the Vascular Plants of Tennessee, by the Tennessee Flora Committee (editors: E.W. Chester, B.E. Wofford, J. Shaw, D. Estes, and D.H. Webb) 

University of Tennessee Press. 813 pages. (from UT Press): The product of twenty-five years of planning, research, and writing, Guide to the Vascular Plants of Tennessee is the most comprehensive, detailed, and up-to-date resource of its kind for the flora of the Volunteer State, home to nearly 2,900 documented taxa. A team of editors, authors, and contributors not only provide keys for identifying the major groups, families, genera, species, and lesser taxa known to be native or naturalized within the state—with supporting information about distribution, frequency of occurrence, conservation status, and more—but they also offer a plethora of descriptive information about the state’s physical environment and vegetation, along with a summary of its rich botanical history, dating back to the earliest Native American inhabitants. Other features of the book include a comprehensive glossary of botanical terms and an array of line drawings that illustrate the identifying characteristics of vascular plants, from leaf shape and surface features to floral morphology and fruit types. Finally, the book’s extensive keys are indexed by families, scientific names, and common names.  

The result is a user-friendly work that researchers, students, environmentalists, foresters, conservationists, and anyone interested in Tennessee botany and the surrounding states will value for years to come. 

2015—Herbarium at Centre College in Danville transferred to EKU  

A collection of a few hundred vascular plant specimens remaining at the Centre College Herbarium was transferred to EKY. Heidi Braunreiter facilitated this transfer, as she was working on her MS thesis on the flora of Boyle County at the time. The collection had formerly been curated by Susan Studlar and focused on nonvascular plants. When Susan Studlar accepted a position at West Virginia University, she took her collection of over 2,000 (mostly) Kentucky mosses and hepatics with her, leaving only a small collection of vascular plants at the college. 

2015—White-haired goldenrod (Solidago albopilosa), one of Kentucky’s three endemic plants, is delisted by USFWS in September 2015. The discovery of new populations and stable long-term trends documented by KSNPC botanists Deb White, Nick Drozda, and Tara Littlefield led to the realization that many of the populations were stable and that the goals of the White-Haired Goldenrod Recovery Plan were met. 

2015—George P. Johnson passes away in December 

George Johnson received his undergraduate and master’s degrees at Western Kentucky University and published a flora on the vascular plants of Barren County. He received his Ph.D. from North Carolina State University, working on the chinkapin chestnuts. He taught at Lindsey Wilson College for four years, before accepting a position at Arkansas Tech University in 1990. In 2015, he was promoted to full professor and honored for 25 years of service. Throughout his career, George remained active in botanical collecting, herbarium work, mentoring students, and publishing articles, and was co-editor of the 2014 volume on the Atlas of the Vascular Plants of Arkansas. He was particularly interested in working to preserve and enhance the herbaria in Arkansas and in developing a digital database of the collections and was a key figure in working with other southeastern U.S. curators to build a database of all SEUS collections, which culminated in the SERNEC website. George was held in very high regard by his friends and associates; for more on his life and career, see the 2016 obituary (from which this entry was copied) written by his student and colleague Travis Marsico: J. Bot. Res. Inst. Texas 10(1):295–298.