Minecraft v1.16.5
Forge v36.1.16
Better Foliage v2.6.3

Souls are missing a texture, while netherrack vines are using an outdated texture. The texture on netherrack vines, algae, and reeds have their texture squished. Short grass also does not appear for me.

Optifine G8 causes the issue with soulsand, which is a regression from Optifine G7 that works fine, last I checked. Strange.

Is BetterFoliage somehow also the cause of the lightmap state leak making torch lightmaps incorrect?...

For me, short grass works fine

Might we know your GPU and CPU specifications please? This might be an AMD vs Nvidia scenario

Soul sand particles are fixed in 2.6.5.

I'll see what I can do about netherrack.

Sounds good, thanks.
My laptop is AMD A12-9720P Radeon with 64 bit, if that helps any.