Early morning sun illuminating the Eastern Sierra Nevadas

Nearly a month and a half into my internship at the Ridgecrest Field Office and I am beginning to settle in. I still marvel at the view of the Argus Range whenever I step out my front door and pause in admiration of the sun setting over eastern Sierra Nevada’s to the west. By no means has day to day life become ordinary – each day in the field has its own surprises. So far, we have suffered a flat tire at the hands of a rough route (nothing like that foreboding hissing sound of all the air leaving your tire at once) and made acquaintances on two occasions with desert tortoises bravely journeying across the perilous road. We also saw our first adorable wild burros and experienced a brief sprinkling of rain. I had previously written off rain as a myth belonging to distant, non-desert lands, but discovered that it does indeed rain here!

A desert tortoise poses with my “tortoise awareness” sticker.

Our seed collections are up and running, as we have completed two collections and are working on the third. Our first collection was of Plantago ovata. At first glance, desert indianwheat reminds me of its rather weedy plantain relatives abundant in un-mowed Midwestern lawns. Looking more closely reveals delicate and nearly translucent flowers set against deep purple seed cases, actually quite beautiful! This observation led me to wonder how often I have overlooked simple beauty, even in urban settings. The seeds themselves are tiny and the collection took several days to complete. Our second collection was of Descurainia pinnata, a tansy mustard with the habit of growing around the base of large shrubs, particularly Lycium cooperi, a very thorny fellow. Our latest collection endeavor has been Stipa hymenoides, an interesting plant historically because the Indian rice grass was a main food staple for indigenous tribes living in the area.

Plantago ovata, Desert Indianwheat

In addition to seed collections, we have also been conducting rare plant species monitoring. This involves visiting locations of known rare plant populations and recording damage or threats to its habitat. Our first plant safari, as we have deemed them, had us on the hunt for a tiny flower endemic to Kelso Valley in the Bright Star Wilderness of the Eastern Sierra Nevada’s. There are only nine known populations of the Kelso Valley Monkey Flower (Mimulus shevoccki), all in and around Kelso Valley. The flower itself is miniscule, often less than an inch tall, and proved challenging to find. Our first day, we spent several hours searching unsuccessfully. Just as we were about to try another site, we finally found the population. As I approached the population, at first I saw just one, then two, then they seemed to materialize out of nowhere in front of me. It was a fulfilling end to our day!

Mimulus shevocckii, the elusive Kelso Valley Monkey Flower

We also surveyed for Phacelia nashiana, a brilliant blue phacelia. Charlotte’s phacelia certainly has a knack for finding hard to reach places. Its preferred habit is impossibly course granite soil on rocky outcroppings, often near the top of steep slopes. Thus our search in each valley began with looking up and locating the nearest high rocky outcropping. Unfortunately, we were monitoring at the end of its bloom period. Summer is rushing in quickly here and the landscape has already begun to turn crispy and brown. After scaling several phacelia-less, dried-up slopes, we came upon a slope alive with flowers. The geography of the slope had kept it shaded from the relentless sun and it was as though we stepped back in time to the height of spring. Sure enough, over two hundred Charlotte’s phacelia were in full bloom at the top!

Phacelia nashiana, Charlotte’s Phacelia

Sometime finding these plant populations is a bit like going on a treasure hunt. We head off into an unfamiliar maze of roads and routes armed with a GPS “X” marking the spot where the population was previously recorded. A successful search yields a view of a rare species or a seed collection, treasures invaluable to plant conservation and research.

E. O’Connell

Ridgecrest BLM Office

I’ve almost completed the first week of my internship with the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park.  As a botany intern I am responsible for updating plant records for all the rare and threatened flora within the parks borders.  The park runs approximately 130 miles along a narrow corridor from the mountains of western Maryland to Washington, D.C.  I’ve spent most of my time here so far getting acquainted with the rich cultural history of the canal and the friendly staff at the park.  I’m immersing myself in the many publications on the natural resources of the area that sits on four massive shelves at the park headquarters.  In particular one publication has caught my fancy and I can’t put it down.  Some of the taxonomic names are out of date but the information it holds on the specialized habitats of the state and the plants within them is invaluable.  Shale barrens and limestone bluffs are especially interesting because this is where many of the plants I’m tasked with surveying for are located.

The first few days here involved various orientation tasks and I’ve only been in the field for a couple hours.  However, in that short time I got to see an impressive display of spring ephemerals and two state listed plants.

Delphinium tricorne, Dwarf Larkspur

Dodecatheon meadia, Shooting Star

I look forward to getting into the field more and more in the coming weeks.  The towpath that runs alongside the entirety of the canal offers great access to the entire park.

Moving forward I plan to schedule my surveying with the goal of focusing on the plants that are flowering currently or will be soon.  I also am tasked with getting the parks “Weed Warrior” program up and running. While the canal has its share of rarities and beautiful habitat, it also faces challenges including a fairly healthy crop of invasive plant species.

“Death is one thing…  an end to birth is something else…”

-M.E. Soule and B.A. Wilcox

Protecting rare and threatened plants has been a passion of mine for a while but the quotation above made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.  After reading it I felt a renewed sense of urgency for the protection of our nations endangered species. It feels good to be in a position to make a positive contribution towards that end.

Coleman Minney
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park
Hagerstown, Maryland

In August of 2011 I moved to Eugene, Oregon. In August of 2012 I left Eugene on a bright orange 1977 Honda Hawk for the east coast with the unknown destination of upstate New York. My best friend, Luke, rode by my side on a Honda of his own.  I was not in search of a career or financial opportunity, but a livelihood (that would also- hopefully- involve some sort of income). When I left Oregon for my two month long motorcycle trip out east I was leaving behind a place I called home- a place I loved dearly and never thought I would leave. But adventure was seeking me out and I could hide no longer. Plus, it’s good to leave what you love- and to return to it later as a more directional and non-self centered being, with the ability to give back all that it has given you.

The experience was awesome and awful.  A lot of misfortune, but a lot of grand fortune, too- helpful people, kind souls, stunning land, horrific storms (yes, I count that as fortunate), the desert which brewed within myself a state of mindfulness and self awareness, the mountains and canyons that echoed my insignificance and initiated a connection between myself and the land that I traveled and the biotic inhabitants that  rested and quarreled among us, the trucker in Arizona who paid for our gas, and Sharon, an older stout woman from Northeast New Mexico that put us up for free and made us BLTs for dinner, eggs and bacon for breakfast, and sent us packing with hugs, apples and canned fruit.

When I arrived in the east it would be another 10 months until I found my way to New York. With an overwhelming feeling of idleness and misdirection living in Vermont and New Hampshire and in-between jobs, I decided to go back to school. So in August of 2013 I enrolled into Paul Smith’s College in the Adirondacks as a wildlife student. It was in that first week that I realized I really didn’t give much interest towards animal science and was instead intently focused on the plants, fungi, insects and the symbiotic relationships among the three. I then enrolled into the integrative studies program for a combination degree in biology and environmental science. I balanced my scientific education with courses in writing, the arts, and the humanities- as well as contributing to art shows and public speaking events. I believe that balance is what kept me sane throughout my very science-intensive curriculum.  I stayed at Paul Smith’s for 5 semesters and graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science in December 2015.

December is a horrible time to graduate if you are a plant person.  Absolutely no one is hiring.  (Hasn’t anyone ever heard of winter ecology!?). So I decided to look into internships that could get me back out in the Pacific Northwest.  I stumbled upon the CLM internship and figured I’d give it a shot.  I was shocked at the effort of perfect placement the CLM recruiters gave.  I mentioned four things that I wanted out of the internship- plants, insects, wetlands, and the Pacific Northwest- and I got all four!

Now here I am- back in Eugene after almost four years, back home in the PNW, studying and monitoring the creatures I care so deeply for.  It’s a complete time loop.  I left not knowing what I wanted or how to get what I needed.  I set out on an adventure with no expectations and in due time it prepared me for what I feel I was meant to do from the very beginning- I just didn’t know it yet.  Well, I kind of new but I think I needed the verification, education, and life experience I didn’t quite have then.  But now I do!  Not that the adventure has ended or that I’m finished learning, experiencing the unexpected.  What a sorry story that would be!   I am where I need to be right now just as I was four years ago- just as I was on my motorcycle, in Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York.  I’m here and I couldn’t be happier.

Danica Maloney

BLM West Eugene Wetlands

Eugene, OR

Hello from Grants Pass, Oregon!

I started a rare plants internship here late in March, almost April. I’ve been here just over three weeks, now. This is my second time participating in the CLM program– last year I was stationed in Susanville, CA focusing on seeds of success. Now I spend my days hunting a federally listed plant, Fritillaria gentneri.

Fritillaria gentneri

My partner, Kiki, and I have been tasked with revisiting 150 gentneri sites during the blooming season which is April through June. I’d say we’ve done forty or so sites. That may not seem like a lot, but some of these sites are hard to get to! Spring has sprung before my very eyes since I’ve been here, which means we stumble across blankets of wildflowers during every hike, but it also means we have to quickly check our remaining sites before they dry up!

There are also plenty of Madrone trees to climb on. Kiki swears up and down that climbing a tree increases the accuracy of the GPS. I’m dubious.

Grants Pass is nestled in the valleys of the Cascades and it really shows in the work. Kiki and I can be found crawling along slopes all over the area, hunting our precious lilies. I affectionately call it ‘billy-goating’, because goats are so good at climbing up scary steep rock walls. Likewise, Kiki and I have to be good at climbing up scary steep grassy or forested hillsides! Thankfully, there’s usually a manzanita or oak to grab on to for stability.

I’m not sure if this picture adequately captures how steep and terrible this hillside is.

The plants themselves can be quite conspicuous, or they can be shy. Sometimes a bright flash of red stands out from the landscape, sometimes it just blends in with the poison oak. It just depends! A lot of the sites are lily-free, which at first was discouraging, but it just makes the victory so much sweeter when a lily pops up! (even though it is totally out of our hands, finding a gentneri feels like a huge victory!)

Can you see the lilies~?

Kiki and I take time to explore the area on the weekends– last week we went to the redwoods at Stout Grove! They’re quite a sight. We had a great time climbing around on the trees that had fallen, and the river that runs next to the grove is so blue!

Kiki and a redwood.

Since most of our days are filled with intense hiking, sometimes we just want to relax by the river and exercise our minds with a rousing game of scrabble!

I lost..

Until next time~!

Lillie P

Hello from Needles! This month it’s finally reached into the 90s! Aside from the sweat that is now mingling with the dust and sand we find on ourselves every day, things are getting exciting! Many desert creatures are starting to make an appearance now, including desert tortoises and snakes.

This month has been full of interesting occurrences including unusual amounts of rain for this time of year, encounters with random desert dwellers (don’t worry, we kept our distance and were safe), and a hike with the Sierra Club!

Amboy Crater after the rains

Earlier this month we met with the Sierra Club at the Turtle Mountains. There is a campground here with a hiking trail through the stunning slopes, however the trail has become less distinguishable with time and even we got lost! The goal of that weekend was to mark out the trail and make it more visible for visitors. It was a great time learning hiking tips and tricks, survival skills in the desert, and lessons learned over the years by the Sierra Club members.  Due to the unusual amount of rain and heavy winds we have been getting around here, we have had to re-assess our seed collecting calendar.

Planning out where to go to find each species!

Many species are setting seed later or earlier than expected! At this point, we are having to constantly check on specific populations because we are not sure when they will be ready. This means a lot of scouting and driving around to various sites in the field office. During this time we practice our botanizing skills and key out plants along the way that we haven’t seen yet! We have made some seed and tissue collections,including Plantago ovata tissue, Ambrosia dumosa tissue, and seeds of Ambrosia salsola and Chaenactis fremontii, but the majority of this month has been scouting. We are excited that next week we will most likely have a lot of collecting to do! We are looking to collect Salvia columbariae seed, Chylismia brevipes seed, and tissue samples of Larrea tridentata and Ambrosia dumosa among others!

Plantago ovata seed!

The next time you hear from me I will most likely have camped by then, because there are so many collections that need to be done in so little time, why waste time driving! 🙂

Until next time!

Wild burros!

Five full moons for me

in this western wild basin: this dusty shrubby sagebrush country

of bunchgrass and saltgrass, saltbush and greasewood, rabbitbrush and winterfat,

of purple sage, black sage, silver sage, big sage.

Tucked among these glaucous shrubs

you just might find plants so scarce, so rare,

they exist nowhere

but here.

Speak softly, step lightly, don’t turn them into ghosts.

Feel the life

of a Wild thing

emerging from cracked clay, gravelled sand, saline playas.

Tiny leaves opening sunward, shy blooms twirling outward,

fuzzy stems,

reaching.

Sit long enough. Soon,

every flower will fade,

crumble to crisp, brown husks,

yield to wind and release, let go,

snag on mammal fur and bird feathers, whisk away.

A few handfulls I will coax

into paper bags,

rustle on gentle screens with gentle hands,

tuck goodnight into artificial winter held fast at 10 degrees.

Saving seed

for another spring.

The sagebrush steppe of western North America is vast. Some have called it “the big empty,” though from the perspective of an ecologist (or any local critter), the terrain is teeming with life. Once extending across 320 million acres, today the sea of sagebrush is fragmented by human industry and agriculture, occupying only half its historic range.

Sagebrush Country

Within the western rim of sagebrush country, the Oregon BLM Vale District manages 5.1 million acres of public lands. I am a migrant mammal here, calling this sagebrush basin home for the next 5 months. My primary duty is to collect seeds from the 70-80 state-listed sensitive plant species of eastern Oregon. While I’ve been waiting for these rare flowers to bloom, I’ve had opportunities to assist with other BLM duties: surveys of Golden Eagle nests and Sage-Grouse mating leks and a visit to Lucky Peak Forest Service nursery.

One early-blooming rare species: Big-Head Clover (Trifolium macrocephalum)

Herbarium explorations

Enjoyable reading: the National Seed Strategy for the next 5 years

The first field outing I took was with a wildlife biologist to survey Golden Eagle nests along the Owyhee River canyon. This giant raptor constructs nests high up on clifftops and rocky outcrops. Mating pairs may build several nests and use a different one each year. Although we confirmed locations of several nests, we could not determine if any are actively being used this spring.

More endemic to sagebrush than Golden Eagles are the Greater Sage-Grouse. These ground-nesting birds are entirely dependent on open expanses of sagebrush habitat. As the habitat has declined, so have the sage grouse. Conservation of this classic sagebrush species is a top management priority for BLM. To learn more about sagebrush ecosystem and life history of the sage grouse, I highly recommend watching the 1-hour PBS documentary The Sagebrush Sea. 

Surveying a Sage Grouse Lek

In the pre-dawn light, I found myself bumping over deep, dusty divets in a tiny utility-terrain vehicle. I hiked through the scrub in a pair of borrowed puffy coveralls to keep the biting wind from my bones, heading through uplands to a historic sage grouse lek. Straight ahead to the west, a magnificent full moon was setting over the Steens Mountains. The snow-covered slopes gradually grew brighter as the sun, in all its scarlet-gold morning hue, rose in the eastern sky behind. As we hiked, my ears ached from the cold wind and my torso dripped with sweat inside the insulated coveralls. We approached slowly, whispering quietly, listening. No sage grouse. That particular lek site has not revealed birds in years.

Another lek site yielded better results. The hike in was littered with two types of sage grouse “sign” (meaning poop): the grassy pellets typical of non-mating sage grouse and the black-tarry patches indicative of active mating (a good “sign”!). As we got closer, I could hear a soft boing-ing tapping and drumming sound. Soon, I spotted a flash of white in the distance. I pressed binoculars to my eyes and began counting: 40 sage grouse in total, mostly males in full display, strutting around, inflating their white-feathered chest air-sacs, slapping them empty, with erect, fan-shaped arrays of white-spotted tail feathers. Around and around they strutted, small tussles breaking out between competing males, a few more birds joining.

The sage grouse mating lek is a courtship ritual of male display and female selection. Typically, only the few “most attractive” males will be selected by the females. Most males will strut to no success. Such is the life of sage grouse. Most leks, including the one I saw, are situated on upland open meadows without tall shrubs or trees.

Visit to Lucky Peak Nursery – U.S. Forest Service

An innovative botany project of the Vale District is the creation of a sagebrush seed orchard. Through a public-private partnership, BLM will be germinate wild-collected Wyoming Big Sagebrush seed (Artemisia tridentata subsp. wyomingensis) and grow the shrubs into a 15-acre “orchard” where seeds will be collected for post-fire restoration. The project will compare two sagebrush restoration methods: planting seeds and planting seedling plugs grown by Lucky Peak Nursery. The Lucky Peak Nursery grows thousands of sagebrush seedlings each year for restoration projects across the Northern Great Basin.

Why so much sagebrush? In recent years, massive wildfires fueled by highly flammable invasive grasses like Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) and Medusahead Rye (Taeniatherum asperum) have decimated hundreds of thousands of acres of sagebrush habitat, leaving bare soil that is quickly recolonized by invasives. Sagebrush seedlings are in high demand by managers seeking to restore these post-fire landscapes. Sagebrush is a slow-growing, wind-pollinated shrub that acts as a nurse plant for other native forbs and grasses. Historic wildfires were small and infrequent; bare soil patches of biotic crusts throughout the steppe prevent spread of fire and most of the native shrubs are slightly fire-resistant. Invasive grass that fuels wildfire is a major land management challenge and a severe threat to all species that depend on sagebrush habitat.

Bouquet of early April bloomers

Field lunch spot along this early spring rain-fed stream

Elk shed found in the field, displayed upon my head

Mickey Hot Springs: the kind of hot spring that boils the occasional cow

Stand of native Aspen

Ephemeral desert stream supporting macroinvertebrates like mayflies and caddisflies

Whimsical sprout of wild onion

Mountain snow storms moving in

Alkaline lake

Alkaline playa plant community

Lauren Bansbach

Bureau of Land Management

Vale, Oregon

— BLM Needles Field Office —

Having spent my life living in northern Illinois where the few hills occur along river courses or areas of glacial deposits, working in Utah has been a mind-blowing change.  I had pursued a CLM internship in hopes of learning about the plants and ecology of a different area of the country and boy is Utah different!

Factory Butte Area

Unlike back home, Utah’s geology is laid bare to inspire and expose the earth’s power to shift and change over vast timescales.  Although it seems to take a long time to get anywhere, driving is great because the landscape gives an ever shifting visual show.  With each terrain shift and turn new formations take center stage and shifting light brings the many color variations to focus.

View of San Rafael Swell

In my two weeks assisting with population monitoring of some listed Sclerocactus and Pediocactus species, I have quickly learned the geology here is not only breathtaking, but is a key component in plants distributions.  Needless to say, I am looking forward to learning more about the region’s geology in the weeks to come and enjoying the geologic show along the way.

The petite Pediocactus despainii

Sclerocactus wrightiae

Cassie Heredia

Bureau of Land Management

Richfield, Utah

The past two weeks have been filled with training, traveling, and wildflowers! The Wenatchee foothills are bursting with color, and it’s all I can do to keep up with learning the new flower species as they start to bloom. Luckily, I’ve already met some great botanists who are willing to let me pester them with questions out in the field, and I’m taking full advantage of their knowledge!

Last week, two of my fellow CLM interns and I drove down to Prineville, OR for a GeoBOB (Geographic Biotic Observations) mobile training course. Although our “field practice” with taking GPS data on our Trimble units ended up happening in the office parking lot, and all of our “observations” were purely fictional, I learned a lot, and I feel much more confident with the protocols of checking data in and out of the GeoBOB database and recording observations than I did before the training. However, the most educational part of the trip ended up happening outside of training, when my fellow interns and I decided to go for a hike at Chimney Rock after class and two botanists decided to come along! It was slow going, what with us stopping every time we saw a new plant, but the views were incredible and I learned so much.

We finally made it to Chimney Rock!

We had another memorable experience earlier this week when we traveled out east to join the Spokane tribe for their annual Root Day event. Over 450 people showed up, many of them schoolchildren, to take part in some traditional digging of Lomatium canbyi roots. These plants are known as biscuitroot, and their tuberous roots are edible (although the raw ones I tried smelled and tasted a bit like diesel fuel!). We spent a couple hours scouring the ground for the coveted plants, and after collecting some roots for the tribe elders, we filled our pockets with our own and are planning to roast them to see if that helps their flavor at all. After the digging, we drove over to Twin Lakes for a barbecue, where I tried salmon for the very first time!

Super excited about my root 🙂

This week we were also introduced to the AIM (Assessment, Inventory and Monitoring) and IRH (Indicators of Rangeland Health) protocols by our supervisor, Erik. It was great being out in the field, especially because the weather has cooled off a bit from the week before. The sites we visited all seemed relatively healthy, and therefore were easy to evaluate, but I’m sure we’ll see a greater range of conditions sooner or later. With AIM training in Prineville next week, and IRH training in Reno the week after that, we’ll be experts at these protocols soon enough!

This site looked like the opening scene in The Sound Of Music!

Katherine Schneider, BLM, Wenatchee WA field office

Spring is finally here on the Caddo National Grasslands. The flowers are blooming and butterflies are arriving. The botanical work is finally picking up in pace. Spring has also brought in many visitors to the Caddo for camping, fishing, and hunting. The crappie have begun to bite on Coffeemill Lake and eastern turkey season has begun. There has been many sightings of eastern turkeys within the last two weeks.

As of today 185 asclepias have been recorded on the Caddo on three different units. Most of the occurrences have been A. viridis. 4 monarch butterflies have been observed as well. No caterpillars or pupae have been observed.

I will post more info and some pictures soon.

Keagan