“In indigenous ways of knowing, it is understood that each living being has a particular role to play. Every being is endowed with certain gifts, its own intelligence, its own spirit, its own story.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

When I think of carnivorous plants I imagine the jungles of South America and swamplands of Florida and Australia. When I think of Sphagnum moss I imagine the peat bogs of Northern Ireland. When I think of these species together, I do not think of Northwestern Montana.

It turns out Northwestern Montana has intermittent patches of a very specific ecosystem type known as a fen. Fens are a type of wetland where water sits or flows year round close to the ground surface which prevents the decomposition of organic material which leads to the formation of peaty poor in nutrients soil (Weixelman & Cooper 2009). While fens are found all over the world, the type of fen found in Northwestern Montana is considered a Rocky Mountain Subalpine-Montane Fen (Montana Field Guides) and due to the year round presence of water, these fens are biodiversity hotspots!

On Monday June 24th my crew and I drove down and forest service road to go set up a long term study in the Porcupine Fen to observe species richness and abundance over time (photos 1-2) This was my first time experiencing an ecosystem like this and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Approaching the fen we trudged through mucky sticky water and tangled shrubs until we got to a clearing, upon first glace it just looks like a grassy shrub land, but then you look a little closer…

… the intensity of species richness is easy to see! Not only are fens one of the only habitats in Montana where one can find Sphagnum Moss in abundance, it is the only ecosystem were you can find Montana’s incredible and unexpected native carnivorous sundew species!

Drosera rotundifolia and Drosera anglica are species of sundew, a type of flowering plant that has adapted to live peaty poor soil nutrient conditions found in fens. The adaption you ask? Capturing and digesting small invertebrates!

Drosera species accomplish this carnivorous act by showing off beautifully bright red spike-like “tentacles” on it’s leaves that have mucilage that glistens in the sun like dew drops. When an insect lands on one of these attractive leaves, they become stuck, unable to free themselves. The plant then releases proteins that will digest the insect so that the plant can absorb ammonia and other key nutrients they’re missing from the poor peat like soil quality (Flora of North America).

Sundews are not the only species that have evolved to live in these low nutrient conditions. We observed several rare orchid species that are also only found in peaty bog like environments (photos 5-7). However, instead of consuming insects to supplement their nutrition needs, these orchids rely on their symbiotic relations with mycorrhizal fungi ( Maris et al., 2023).

Seeing such a unique environment was really inspiring. As a young scientist there’s nothing quite like exploring an ecosystem that has so much left to be discovered. The relationship between these flowing plants, the carnivorous plants, the moss, and the mycorrhizal fungi in these fen systems is extremely under researched and has me thinking a lot about future project ideas.

I am looking forward to exploring more fens and other unique Montana ecosystems that inspire me this summer, including alpine white park pine habitat! (but that’s for another blog post 🙂

– Erynn
Flathead National Forest, MT

Imagine spread in front of you is an open I Spy book. You look at the list of objects you’re supposed to be finding in the chaos and … you don’t even know what any of the objects look like. This is kind of how it has felt for me transitioning from the dry deserts of New Mexico and Utah to the flora in the Alpine Meadows and stands of Pine in Wyoming.

A whole new suite of plant species spreads in front of me that I am somehow supposed to identify, find large enough populations of, and collect seed from. For the past weeks I’ve been searching for specific plants (alongside my co intern in the Big Horn Mountains, Nick Gjording), only a couple of which I’ve seen in the wild before. That’s not even mentioning the grasses that make up half our species list that blend in nicely to the background of the I Spy page in front of us.

My time so far in the Bighorn National Forest has been spent driving to hopeful plant locations or desperately scanning out the car window (remember those in car I spy games when your sibling would inexplicitly say “I spy with my little eye, something green”? … yeah). When the time comes to get outside, and I hopelessly scan the ground for the plants on our list.

During the furious scanning back and forth, between checking grass ligules and looking at the hairs on yellow asters, something amazing happens. When you look so closely at a defined area, you start to notice all the little things that are so easy to pass over. It’s like finding a tiny figure of your favorite dog breed or seeing the cutest rubber ducky on the I Spy page. Some of the highlights in our adventures include spying a light pink Lupin plant (they’re normally a dark blue-ish purple here), a patch of liverworts (which, as a Bryophyte enthusiast myself, was especially exciting), and a multitude of interesting new-to-me plants. I even spied some Yucca, a plant familiar from my “hometown” experiences I didn’t even realize grew this far North.

And occasionally, a miracle happens, and you manage to find a suitable population! In the weeks of planning and scouting that have already happened, despite how early in the growing season we are (especially in those higher elevation areas) coming up on those populations is a satisfying feeling like no other.

In one case, we spent a couple of days searching for Eriogonum umbellatum, only finding one or two occasional individuals. Then, within the next few days we came across two independent and large populations; all that hard work paid off. Later I’ll get to return to these populations, hopeful that nature will have taken its course, and everything will have aligned so the plants can have bloomed, been pollinated, and be producing seed. Hopeful, I write down the location of the population and cross my fingers that I won’t miss that slice of time when the seeds are ready for us to collect.

In this real-time, real-life I Spy book, I’ve somehow managed to take a list of unknowns in the large and very green spread in front of me and find what I was looking for, and even more that I wasn’t expecting.

But the season is only beginning. Imagine that in your book more frustration, excitement, and unexpected finds lay in front of you. As the season progresses, you know that things will only get easier; that list of unknowns will slowly but surely become more familiar and understood. The list at the bottom of your I Spy page is no longer full of nebulous, unrecognizable words but a list of familiar and perhaps even crossed off treasures. You’ve now completed maybe the first page of the I Spy book that you’ll continue to work through for the rest of the field season, and you can’t wait to intimately know that crucially important list of objects, their unique locations, and the beauty that surrounds it all.  

With a swish and a thump, Beth secures an iridescent insect in her net. Seconds before, the bee was busy flying back and forth on a determined path, visiting a network of dangling flowers, ripe with sweet nectar. Swoop! Another bee in the jar. I snag a tiny wasp covered in pink pollen. The rush of watching tiny insects jump between flowers in a coordinated dance enthralls us. Suddenly Pauleen shouts “time is up!” and we lay down our nets.

We’re here to support Lewisia kelloggii-a rare plant of the Eldorado National Forest that makes its living on exposed lava caps and decomposed granite soils. The prostrate rosette of fleshy leaves emerges after the snow melts in spring, and the brilliant white flowers follow soon after. Pollinators flock to the exposed sites, feasting on a diverse array of nectar producers. As they buzz from tiny annuals to bushy perennials, they create a pollinator network; a web of interactions which enables both insects and plants to thrive.

Our work will help the research team at Cal State East Bay build an understanding for what pollinators are in the network of our rare Lewisia. We will then be able to collect seeds from the plants that flower earlier and later in the season, supporting the pollinators and in turn supporting the Lewisia.

The first few weeks of the field season have been an exciting time! We’ve already dealt with a fire scare, stuck vehicles (not ours hah), flat tires (also not us) and the onslaught of new knowledge that happens when moving to a new place and staring at the ground all day. It has been wonderful, and I can’t wait to deepen my relationship with this place and all the creatures that inhabit it.

I’ll admit I was quite nervous to start this job and move to Montana. Coming from MA, one of the most densely populated states in the US, to MT, one of the least populated states, was quite intimidating. I was preparing myself for quite a difficult adjustment, but I have actually been having a lovely time and the adjustment has been easy.

So far I have been doing A LOT of learning. Being from the east coast I had to learn a bunch of new flora that I have never seen before. I have found a lot of comfort seeing plants like Mountain Bluebells and Glacier Lilies which are very similar to species we have where I am from. The whole structure of forests and other ecosystems here are entirely different than what I am used to, but it has been a fun challenge. Coming from a place with mostly deciduous forests it was surprising to see the forests full on conifers. All of the pines make the forests smell so good and I love walking around in them or just sitting next to a stream and taking in my surroundings. People told me Montana was beautiful, but there is no way to understand the true beauty of Montana without seeing it.

Now, about the cows. Everywhere you go in Montana you will see cows, you might not see a person, but the cows are ever present. After one of our scouting trips we were driving back to the Ranger station when we realized we were approaching animals in the road. Being that we were in a national forest I was preparing myself for deer or maybe even a bear. That is when we realized it was a bunch of loose cows! For a little we just stared at the cows and they stared back at us. Eventually my partner had to get out of the car and clap to heard the cows out of the road. I have a feeling that will not be our last cow encounter in the field.

I’m off to a good, but very busy, start to this internship. It has been nearly a month of training, moving across the country (North Carolina to California!), settling in, and having an intense crash course on California botany. 

Having been an east coast, big city person all of my life, arriving out west was a surreal experience. After a busy week of training in Chicago, I flew from Chicago to Phoenix, then Phoenix to Reno, then had my Forest Service supervisor (Andy) pick me up in Reno and drive me the two hours to what is now the quaint little town I live in: Quincy, CA. Andy gave me all the local facts as we made our way through rural mountain roads to reach the ranger station: Quincy has a population of around 5,000 people, and is the largest town in Plumas county. Which means, despite being a very small town, there’s a fair amount of restaurants and events that happen here, because it’s where everyone in the county goes for activities. I arrived at the Forest Service housing around 10 pm, got some much needed rest, and then promptly started my first day of work two days later, that following Monday.

The first week of work mainly consisted of Andy showing me and my co-intern (Sam) around the forest, giving us a tour and also teaching us a lot about California plants. We drove all around to different areas of the forest, hopping out of the truck whenever Andy got excited about a roadside plant for us to try to guess an ID.

Later in the week we started more serious ID practice, using both the Jepson manual and a more specific local flora, to brush up on our keying skills. We walked through all kinds of habitat; rocky outcroppings on mountain tops (where we found some rare plants!), meadows, wetlands, mixed conifer forests. Some really cool species of note we saw in the first couple of weeks include: some HUGE Douglas firs (Pseudotsuga menziesii), Sugar pines (Pinus lambertiana, which produces the largest pine cones in the world), plenty of really cool myco-heterotrophic plants including Phantom orchids (Cephalanthera austiniae), Coral root (Corallorhiza maculata), Pinedrops (Pterospora andromedea), and more.

The myco-heterotrophic plants often have such striking colors to them because they don’t produce chlorophyll, which is what makes most plants characteristically green. Instead, these plants are essentially parasitic, taking nutrients from nearby tree roots by tapping into the mycorrhizal fungi associated with the tree.

Once we got a little acquainted with the plants here in northern California, Andy had us shadow him for a few days to help out with rare plant surveys so that we could continue to practice our ID skills and also have a lot more exposure to help remember all the plants we learned. I was the one transcribing one of our surveys, and we got over 150 different species! I am surprised at how well Sam and I are picking things up, but it still is a lot to remember, and I’m sure it’ll take some time before all the information really sinks in.

Last week, our third, we finally got our own Forest Service truck, which meant Sam and I were able to start going out on our own to begin scouting for plants on our native species list. We got to it immediately, because a few of our species are already beginning to go to seed. It’s been a lot of work trying to organize and plan everything in an efficient way, but so far we’ve developed a good system for staying organized with our data and seeds, and we’re reminding ourselves it’ll only get easier as we get more practice. 

That’s month one in summary! It’s been overwhelming at times but overall very exciting and rewarding.

As other CLM folks will likely attest to, the first month of interning with the forest service can be quite shocking. New challenges present themselves often and in interesting ways. Working with a botany crew will show you how much you really do not know about plants. Having your sleeping bag break on a cold night will show you how little prepared you are to take on a Bear Grylls style survival situation. And yet, even though the challenge persists, you get better at handling it as the days go by. You’ll find yourself saying crazy things like “You see those palmate leaves? Obviouslyyy a lupine”. Or not so crazy things like “We should probably pack an extra sleeping bag.”

Luckily, just as challenges present themselves, wonderful examples of how to face them also do. When I feel overwhelmed about being far from home, I think of my courageous cat Skateboard, who braved the journey from West Virginia to Montana, taking in all the smells on the way. I also think of the wise advice given by our crew lead Riley, who reminds us not to expect ourselves to know everything right away. Instead, she says to take our time, try our best, and enjoy the challenge.

Between seed collection and botany fieldwork, there have been a plethora of opportunities to nerd out and learn as much as possible. So far, some of my favorite projects have been rare plant monitoring in Big Hole National Park and nonlethal bee collection for the Montana Bee Atlas Project. I’ve learned so much from our botany crew, including our entomology intern, who taught me how to set up beetle traps this week! The list of plants I can reliably identify in the field grows (slowly) every day. I’m excited to see how much I have learned by the next blog post. Until then, I’ll take things one day at a time.

Deb day. Tuesday June 18th. Fourth day on the job.

I had been hearing about Deb, this mysterious woman who had decades of Botany experience in the Bitterroot National Forest. She was going to be taking us out into the field today and schooling us on the ways of the plants. Li, a Montana Conservation Corps fellow, had arrived in Montana a few weeks before and already had a “Deb Day.” She talked highly of Deb’s teachings, specifically her tips on how to scale the steep slopes.

We piled into the truck and rumbled along towards the forest. As we turned into the cover of the trees she began to point out various birds and plants, and talked about the geological history of the Bitterroots. Winding up the West Fork, we squeezed by branches and bumped over holes and rocks. Eventually, we came to an opening at the base of a steep hill where two sensitive species grow.

Deb had been a seasonal botany technician for 17 seasons, and when she talked about plants it was clear she had invaluable botanical wisdom. She pointed out plants as we went along, showing us how we could distinguish serviceberry from spirea by the curve of the leaf veins, but also elk sedge from pinegrass by running our fingers along the leaves. I ran my hand along the elk sedge and it felt wiry and stiff, and the pinegrass was fine and smooth. Once I did this, their similar looking leaves seemed less confusing.

As we made our way up the hill we spotted some brilliant red among the green. It was one of our rare plants: Castilleja covilliana, or Coville’s Indian Paintbrush. Deb showed us how C. covilliana’s leaves are spidery and thin, compared to the thicker leaves of its more common counterpart, C. hispida. There was one individual, the one in the picture below, that looked totally covilliana-y to my new Montana-botany eyes, but there were other individuals around that I would have thought were C. hispida. Deb talked about how these plants are very plastic, meaning their features can vary a lot depending on the environment they live in. Leaves in particular are plastic, which is unfortunate considering leaves are an important distinguisher between C. covilliana and C. hispida. This all made me feel very confused.

I also learned later that Castillejas can hybridize, meaning two individuals from different species can “break the rules” and mate, forming a plant that is neither C. covilliana nor C. hispida. So not only are the leaves plastic, they might also genuinely be a mix of the two species. So I imagine the entire season I will be asking myself “are these leaves spidery enough to be C. covilliana?”

Deb then announced that we were looking for Allium parvum, or small onion. We scoured the rocky ground for the onion. I would take a few steps, then scan, take a few steps, then scan. I saw nothing. After awhile, Deb announced that she found one. We scrambled over to her, and I looked around on the ground, and saw nothing. Then she pointed to a tiny, pale wisp on the tan gravel. It was nearly the same color as the rocks around it, was less than an inch wide, and had detached from any leaves. I thought to myself that there was no way I would be able to spot this by myself.

As Li made her way over to us she spotted another onion. This one was slightly more conspicuous: still connected to the ground, connected to its leaves, and less dried out. It was a cute little thing, but still seemed hard to spot with its somewhat transparent petals and tiny stature.

After the Allium, we made our way back down the hill, ate lunch in the bed of the truck, and then headed to a second site. Again, we wound up curvy gravel roads, with steep drop-offs that made me feel a little dizzy. The next site was a hill of coarse granite pebbles. But gorgeous blue and purple flowers poked from the gravel. This was Penstemon lemhiensis, the rare penstemon. It has bigger flowers than its lookalike Penstemon albertinus, and has a white mid-vein on its leaves. This one was my favorite of the day: easily spotted, no confusing leaf evaluations, and flowers that seemed to glow in the sunlight.

I was surprised to learn that these rare/sensitive species tend to be on seemingly inhospitable slopes. I imagined the all the sensitive species being in hidden oases with crystal-clear water, not on harsh, gravel slopes. But I’ve seen them and they are there!

As we ended the day with Deb, I remembered how good it feels to be able to know and recognize the plants around me. Coming to Montana was a bit of a botanical shock, in the sense that I went from knowing a good portion of the plants in St. Louis, to knowing almost none. While I still have a lot of learning to do, it has been rewarding to feel myself getting familiar with the Montana flora.

Until next time,

Cicely