GNPS Newsletter

We bid farewell to the 2022 Plant of the Year, American beech (Fagus grandifolia) at its finest. Photo by Ellen Honeycutt.

In This Issue ...

Save the Date for the 2023 Symposium!

We will again partner with Georgia Audubon to have an online event. It will held on February 18th and 19th.

Plant of the Year!

The Georgia Native Plant Society is happy to announce that our 2023 Plant of the Year is spotted beebalm (Monarda punctata). You can read more about this outstanding herb in our January 2023 NativeScape.

Conservation Direction for SMPP Grows Steadily in 2022

Left: Plants await pickup by Audubon for installation at Panola Mountain State Park in early September. Right: GNPS-grown Liatris spicata at Panola Mountain State Park in early October.

What a difference a year makes! In last December’s newsletter, we outlined our vision for a new, more conservation-minded direction for our Stone Mountain Propagation Project (SMPP). We are pleased to report that our first year, though not without its challenges, has been a great success. By the year’s end, we will have sold or donated plants valued at over $18,500 to our wholesale customers and our GNPS restoration sites.

Georgia Audubon has been our primary wholesale customer this year. Out of our first discussions with them last fall, we forged a partnership to provide plants to their prairie restoration project at Panola Mountain State Park. To date, Audubon has installed over 5,000 plants comprising 12 species that we grew from seed this year. Primary species included Rudbeckia fulgida, Baptisia australis, Asclepias tuberosa, Solidago nemoralis, Penstemon digitalis, and Coreopsis grandiflora. If you follow Georgia Audubon on social media, you may have seen this video on the prairie restoration project. Another Audubon project, the visitor center at the Island Ford Unit of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, has also received plants grown by us. Other wholesale customers included Trees Atlanta and the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

We were pleased to donate several dozen native shrubs and other plants to Young Harris College, which has been a wonderful partner to our North Georgia Mountains Chapter. A YHC faculty member and maintenance staffer are on a mission to remove all non-native invasive ornamental plants from the campus, and they were grateful for our gift.

Left: Pat Reynolds (right) and her husband, Guy, are all smiles about the plant donations for the Zonolite Park GNPS restoration site. Right: Grounds supervisor Tracy Parker (left) and biology professor Jonathan Micancin (right) of Young Harris College show off their plants received from SMPP.

One of the protected species that we grow is Blue Ridge catchfly (Silene ovata). We had a bumper crop this year and donated 30 of our plants to the State Botanical Garden in Athens, which their conservation folks were delighted to receive.

Last, but certainly not least, we were pleased to provide plants valued at over $1,000 to our GNPS restoration sites. Many of these plants came to SMPP from GNPS rescues, so it was particularly appropriate that those plants should find a home where they can benefit the ecosystem long-term. We have several regular volunteers who routinely participate in GNPS rescues. You may hear them ask if you can dig a few plants for SMPP. This is the effort that those requests support, and we appreciate your help.

We continue to maintain and improve three areas at Stone Mountain Park: the Harold Cox Nature Garden, the mountain walk-up trail parking lot, and the Pen Women’s Garden. Our volunteers received permission to remove hundreds of non-native azaleas at the Nature Garden, and they have made tremendous progress on this task this year. We are grateful for our partnership with the Stone Mountain Memorial Association for allowing us use of our propagation area, and we are pleased to give back to them by helping to maintain these areas.

The accomplishments we’ve made this year would not have been possible without our dozens of GNPS volunteers and their hard work. Over 50 different members have volunteered at the propagation center collectively working some 1,200+ hours with our plant production. Another 75 hours were worked at the parking lot, and 175 hours at the Nature Garden. All volunteers agree that they learn much, enjoy the beautiful surroundings of the park, and the friends they have made through GNPS.

If you have not yet volunteered with us at Stone Mountain, or if it has been a while since you joined us, we would love to have you. Please email me at loriconway@gnps.org.

Coastal Plain Chapter Members Honored by GPCA

Pictured from left to right are Mincy Moffett, USFWS Biologist, and Jennifer Ceska, GPCA Coordinator, presenting the Good Egg Awards to Amy Heidt and Paul Sumner.

Recently two members of the Coastal Plain Chapter (CPC) attended the Georgia Plant Conservation Alliance (GPCA) Fall Meeting in Brunswick, Georgia. At this meeting. CPC members Amy Heidt and Paul Sumner were surprised and honored to receive two of the first “Good Egg” awards given by the group for their contributions to native plant conservation in the state of Georgia.

Amy and Paul have been members of CPC since its beginnings in 2013 and members of GPCA as plant guardians/volunteers since about 2016. Amy and Paul serve as GPCA Botanical Guardians and assist with plant rescues and restorations. They are also active with rare plant safeguarding - maintaining both ex-situ plant collections and propagating additional materials for in-situ conservation on protected lands. They manage propagation projects and contribute directly to the conservation work of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the State Botanical Garden of Georgia.

Amy serves on the GNPS Board of Directors (BOD) as Conservation Director. She serves as Chair of the Conservation Committee and Rescue Subcommittee, and as a member of the Restoration and Propagation Subcommittees at the state level. As conservation director and member of the conservation subcommittees she worked with committee and subcommittee members to rewrite and strengthen the GNPS Conservation Policy and the Rescue and Restoration manuals with an emphasis on native plant preservation and cooperation with conservation partners. She serves on the BOD of CPC as propagation Chair, and has served in several other capacities on the CPC board in the past.

Paul Sumner is on the CPC BOD as Membership Chair, and manages the CPC web and Facebook presence. In addition, he works tirelessly as a GPCA plant guardian/volunteer and as a volunteer with plant propagation.

Plant Spotlight: Grapefern

Southern or sparselobe grapefern (Botrychium biternatum now Sceptridium biternatum). Left: a slngle sterile frond and a fertile stalk. Center: Coloration sometimes seen in winter. Right: Grouping of plants.

Visible now in woodland areas are small, single-frond ferns called grapeferns. While uncommon, grapeferns are not rare; there are 4 species of grapefern in Georgia and many more in the rest of the US. Perhaps the most common -- and with good state-wide distribution -- is Southern or sparselobe grapefern (Botrychium biternatum now Sceptridium biternatum).

While this fern is green (or may be bronze in some areas) during the winter, it is not a true evergreen. Grapeferns go dormant during the warm months, emerging again in the fall. The triangular-shaped frond is a sterile frond; if it is mature enough, it will form a separate fertile stalk, called a sporophore, which has the clusters of sporangia (spore cases). It is thought that the gametophytes (the early form of the fern, similar to a seedling state) gain some nourishment from an association with mycorrhizal fungi.

Botrychium virginianum now Botrypus virginianus is a spring-appearing similar species known as rattlesnake fern. It is dormant in the winter but when you have the two of them in the same area (such as in my woodland yard), it can seem like a fern is always there.

If you’re seeing other green ferns, two other evergreen native ferns that we’ve featured before are resurrection fern and Christmas fern.

Chapter News

Left: Members of the Fringed Campion Chapter work together to lay out the walking path through the Monarch Waystation Garden. Right: Coastal Plain Chapter members scout at the Berrien County clearcut site.

Coastal Plain Chapter

Coastal Plain Chapter members Heather Brasell, Amy Heidt and Mary Alice Applegate recently scouted two sites on a Berrien County forest property that had been clearcut. The property is scheduled to be sprayed with herbicide before pines are to be replanted next year. The property owner has given permission to rescue plants found on the site. Heather, Amy and Mary Alice collected seeds and identified many species worth saving. Check the GNPS calendar for rescue dates to be announced in January.

Fringed Campion Chapter

The Fringed Campion Chapter is currently working with the Department of Parks and Beautification in Macon-Bibb County, the Bibb County Cooperative Extension office, and the Master Gardeners of Central Georgia to install a native plant garden and monarch waystation in Amerson River Park in Macon. The garden will include approximately 3,200 square feet. We have budgeted $15,000 for the Native Plant Garden and Monarch Waystation as a whole, and are starting our fundraising campaign this month. The garden project is being spearheaded by Carol Bokros. There have been several workdays already this fall to work on soil preparation. The first phase of planting is scheduled to be completed in the spring of 2023.

North Georgia Mountains Chapter

Thank you to the two members who stepped forward at the November annual meeting to take on the positions of Treasurer (Wendy Beyer) and Co-Vice President (Linda Beaver). Your support is much appreciated! The subsequent presentation was by Felicity Davis with the Georgia Department of Transportation, including about the program to promote native plants along state highways, and now the attendees will be more aware as they are out for a drive.

Our next meeting will be on the second Saturday of January (the 14th) at 10:00 a.m. in room 107 of the Maxwell Center of Young Harris College. The presentation will be by Christopher Singer, leader of the Live Monarch Foundation. You can guess what the topic will be! So, get this on your calendar now!

Intown Atlanta Chapter

Join the board of the Intown Atlanta Chapter for our first event of the New Year!

Winter sowing is a fun, easy, low-cost way to grow native plants and increase biodiversity. This rewarding process will help you to successfully grow plants that improve our local ecosystem and take advantage of the natural germination process by adding protective elements provided by nature through temperature changes. Our presenters will show you how! You can participate in a Free Raffle for native seed packets.