Adventures into Nevada

This last month was quite the adventure! I went all over Nevada looking for ERUM and collecting seeds. We collected quite a few seeds from a number of areas in Nevada and Idaho. I also went to Reno to help with the common gardens. We went downtown after we finished work and saw this amazing art!

I also went on a GLORIA project trip and monitored the top of mountains. I learned a lot from experienced botanists. We also found ERUM up in the alpine habitat and went back last week to collect, and got two different varieties of ERUM seed collections!

One of our locations that we used for camping in Nevada was Angel Lake, which had a lot of ERUM and was also a beautiful locations.

We found a ton of beautiful campsites in Nevada!

Beth tried to take a panorama of our campsite and ended up with this monstrosity of a photo… Anyways, it was another great month, and hopefully I will get a lot more seed collections in this next month before the end of the season!

Steens to Nevada, exploring mountains for ERUM!

This month has gone by fast! The Rocky Mountain Research Station has been busy this month!

Since my last post, I have been busy traveling for seed scouting. One of the research station’s techs, Marguerite, joined me on a seed scouting trip. We are completely focused on Eriogonum umbellatum, and we went looking up by Council, Idaho. We went to this neat lookout with an amazing view.

While we were searching for ERUM, we came across something pretty cool! We left it alone, but it was a neat find!

Old shotgun and ERUM!

Then, Elric and I went out to Nevada with another one of the RMRS techs, Bebe! We had a great time searching for ERUM in northern Nevada. This was during the tropical storm warning, but we lucked out and never hit rain once. We found wonderful places to camp and explore, and we saw some gorgeous sunsets and stunning alpine lakes! We also collected one population of ERUM, and are going back in the future when the plants are seeding to collect from two more populations!

Elric and I went to explore South Mountain (in the Owyhees in Idaho) in search of ERUM. We found a ton of Eriogonum heracleoides, but unfortunately no ERUM. We stopped at a neat lookout and had a nice time exploring the area.

To end August, a forest service tech Joe and I went to explore Steen Mountains in Oregon! This trip was grand. Steen Mountains has a 60 mile loop road that is accessible for most cars (washboards but no potholes), and is 100% worth the trip. We found ERUM all over this range, and in the high elevation site it was still blooming! Joe and I had a nice time exploring the area, and we woke up one morning and realized it was in the 20s while we were sleeping (brr). After a successful seed collecting trip, we traveled back to Boise!

This was a great month of exploring and seed collecting! looking forward to next month with my team!

A deep dive into the bottle gentian

Before going on trips to collect seed, our team does research on every plant on our list so that we can understand what it looks like at every stage and be better prepared to identify it within the field. It usually takes quite a while to learn the key characteristics and the plants sometimes meld together in my mind. For some plants, they are so unique and unexpected that I am ecstatic to find them in the field. One such plant is the bottle gentian, Gentiana andrewsii. It has 5 fused petals, forming a tube that will never open. This closed tube resembles a closed bottle, thus the name.

the icon, the legend, Gentiana andrewsii

While in northern Minnesota, the team saw one in the parking lot of our site and nowhere else. It is such an interesting inflorescence because it never opens. I could not imagine how it could be pollinated. After some outside research into the scientific literature, I learned that only bumblebees are physically able to crawl inside the tube and rub pollen on their sternum in the process. Oddly enough, the corolla tube of Gentiana andrewsii is much longer than the tongue of the two studied bumblebees. This would make it very difficult for bumblebees to access the nectar at the bottom. Instead, most bees access the nectar through lateral lacerations. The bees studied were not known for being corolla perforating species and no other mechanisms for lacerations were provided. Even as they steal nectar from some inflorescences, it was only observed coupled with also entering the tube to retrieve pollen. My theory is that the stealing is not driving changes on either side because the bees get nectar and the plants still get their pollen spread.

Flowering Big Bluestem (Andropogon gerardii)

Gentiana andrewsii is a dependable species for bumblebees because no other pollinators are in competition for the resources. I was bummed that we did not find a large population, but future collections of this plant would be great for native bee restoration efforts!

Check out this video on Facebook of a bee diving head first into the plant.

https://www.facebook.com/in.our.nature.gardens/videos/watch-this-bumblebee-push-her-way-into-the-flowers-of-closed-bottle-gentian/5348288618516323/

Working in the field is never a dull time with these views

Check out this amazing paper for more details!

Costelloe, B. H. (1988). Pollination ecology of Gentiana andrewsii. Ohio Journal of Science, 88(4), 132-138.

The First of Many

It has been an eventful and uneventful month. Now you might be wondering how it can be both. Well, as I looked over my camera roll to determine the subject of this month’s blog, nothing stands out. That’s not to say that I didn’t do anything exciting this month because many interesting things happened at work as well outside of work that included many of my first.

First Seed Collection

For instance, Peter and I started our first seed collection of the season since seeds here are finally starting to mature. Our first collection is none other than the lovely Allium cernuum. However, this was after a few failed attempts to collect seeds from Mertensia franciscana and Mornada fistulosa. The plants were either grazed by elk and wild horses or most of the seeds dropped. It was a bit discouraging at first and a learning lesson, but I knew there was other species to collect from.

First UTV Ride

We spent the rest of the month scouting for more species across the forest and monitoring the phenology of scouted populations. As a result, we had the privilege to ride a UTV at the Sacramento Ranger District (SRD). Angie, the Wildlife Biologist at SRD and the one who drove us around, insisted that we take a photo in it to brag to our Wildlife Crew members as they don’t have any.

Although it was a fun experience, I don’t think I will ever get on one ever again. That’s because as we drove, a long stick went through the UTV floor and hit the seat next to me all while making a loud noise due to a stainless steel bottle on the floor being shoved out of the way. At the end of the day, I rather not be impaled by a stick while riding a UTV just to get to a location faster.

Peter and I awkwardly smiling while seated in a UTV.

First Salamander Encounter

The amazing part of being at the Smokey Bear Ranger District is the opportunity to join the wildlife surveys. Usually, the Wildlife Crew at the district joins the Salamander Crew to survey the Sacramento Mountain salamander (Aneides hardiiI), but Peter and I were able to help them for one day since the Wildlife Crew was busy with other surveys. I had never seen a salamander in person before, so I was excited not only to learn the process of surveying them but also to finding one myself.

So after disinfecting our boots to prevent any possible spread of chytrid fungal pathogen to the salamanders and going over the protocol at the site, I was ready to find salamanders. The process involved flipping a lot of rocks and logs, but eventually I was able to capture a few. Initially, I was afraid to pick any of them up as some were tiny that I thought I was going to harm them in the process of putting them in a bag. Moreover, I didn’t know how the salamander would feel. However, the fear quickly went away.

In the end, different data was collected that included surface area of the object where the salamander was found, soil moisture, the weight, and length the salamander captured. Any new adult salamanders that was captured, were marked with a “tattoo”. Which really involved injecting them with a needle filled with fluorescence pigments in a specific sequence to help with identification if they are recaptured again in future surveys. Once all the data was collected, the salamanders were placed back to where it was found.

First Meteor Shower Party

Growing up in Chicago, I never had the chance to stargaze due to the light pollution. As a result, I never knew about the Perseid meteor shower. Peter, on the other hand, knew all about it and that’s because he watches it every year on his birthday. Now, that I reside in smaller town with minimum light pollution, I was determined to experience my first meteor shower.

I searched up places that had a meteor shower party and found that El Malpais National Monument was having one after Ranger-led bat outflight guided walk on August 11. Bats and meteor shower on the same day? Count me in! The only problem it was 3.5 hours away and there was a chance of rain, but I figured it was a perfect opportunity to do a weekend road trip.

In the end, I got to see some bats despite it raining, but I didn’t get to see the meteor shower due to the clouds blocking the night sky. Thus, my first attempt to watch a meteor shower was unsuccessful. Fortunately, I returned to Ruidoso in the afternoon the next day and there was no clouds in sight. Spontaneously, I and a Wildlife Crew member from SRD decided to camp at a lookout that night to see the meteor shower.

Not only was I able to see my first meteor shower, but also the Milky Way!

– Evie

This month is heating up in Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest!

With most of our seed populations hitting or nearing their harvest date, it has been extremely important to prioritize time efficiency during our daily routine. We have been camping weekly to reduce our overall travel time and on further trips we just backpack in.

This month we logged our most intense trek in yet, a daunting two-day and 16-mile trip with steep elevation. We had the Bitterroot team tag along as we hiked trough miles of post-burn forest, then up a mountain pass and back down to a beautiful lake on the other side. We made frequent stops to catch pollinators along the loop and were botanizing along the way.

It was great to have volunteers and Hiccup along for the trip because it was definitely a different vibe than going in a smaller group. It was a lively and fun experience to backpack into the wilderness with 10 other people!

After setting up camp, pinning our bees and making dinner, our group was treated to a beautiful sunset displayed on the face of a nearby mountain. Then, early the next morning, we continued catching bees and hiking the return route back to the trucks.

We were off running after the backpacking trip with thousands of seeds ready for harvest. The coming weeks were spent running between surveying wetland rare plant polygons, searching for white bark pine in pre-treatment areas, and marking/collecting seed populations. We try to rotate between areas daily when not camping, or weekly when camping, so we often are marking, monitoring, collecting and surveying for differently things as we come across potential populations. It is easy to distinguish potential habitats for species at interest in an area with such abrupt changes in features. Between wet meadows, lodgepole forest and steek scree deposits, we are spending less time locating the habitat, and more time surveying in the right spots.

Crawling around in vegetation puts you eye-to-eye with some super unique insects! We have come across some interesting galls, moths and caterpillars while surveying. I think that entomology is an awesome way to break of the monotony of identifying/looking for the same plants over a long day.

Salt Marsh Moth (Estigmene acrea)

We utilized a few new techniques in some interesting studies this month. At the beginning of August, we deployed our first pollinator “vein traps” and we collected the jars this week. This trap uses yellow color to lure pollinators into its basin which is coated in a slippery substance. The collection is bagged and preserved in alcohol, then sent to Montana State University for identification.

Collecting our bee vein trap from the only tree in the area

We also surveyed a biochar application and reseeding site. This area was a post-burned lodgepole forest with transects of different applications: Seeded with annuals, seeded with perennials, and treated with varying amounts of biochar. Our survey was the second revisit of a long-term study, and it was really interesting to see such stark differences between species in each transect. We used a pencil drop method to record plants at each interval and stood on a crate to use photo frames to estimate vegetation coverage per species.

The biochar treatment in a post burn forest

This August culminated with seed collections on top of seed collections. Considering my limited amount of office time, it has been very hard to get much seed processing and electronic documenting done. Instead, we have been working to maximize our populations quantities and abundance. We are beginning to prepare our first seed shipment, but our daily priorities are much more urgent. So, our methods for now are: Collect, collect, collect and document all data! and we will deal with office hours once seeds are done for the season.

One of our sites had two large populations of Penstemon albertinus (Alberta Penstemon) and Heterotheca villosa (Hairy False Goldenaster). It was right next to some abandoned charcoal kilns and made for a long day of collection at one site. Last month was filled with grass seed collection, so it has been great to target other types of seed. Overall, we completed 6 quality collections between these two species.

The canyon creek charcoal kilns

I try to make the most of my limited free time and squeezed in some great adventures during this month. Some highlights were watching the meteor shower from the top of Blue Mountain, backpacking in Glacier National Park, hiking to Storm lake, touring Lewis and Clark Caverns, digging in Crystal Park, and always… the great local hot springs!

Fishing at Lake Otokomi

I am running away from seasonal depression.

Alyssa cooking breakfast while reading, an icon.

After much scouting, monitoring phenology, and waiting we have finally collected seed. Since, I worked as a seed collector last year too one might think that I would be more accustomed to the less-than-predictable and uncontrollable nature of wildland seed collection. Yet, I am still constantly surprised when I look at my record of our daily activities throughout this summer just how much time we’ve spent scouting and monitoring potential collection site compared to how many seeds we’ve actually collected.

The beautiful Ribes aureum fruits aka Golden Currant. A good collection and a snack that’s hard to stop munching!

But now, finally, I am happy to report that we’ve made 6 collections this month. Don’t mind the fact that only 3 are likely to meet the 30,000 seed minimum requirement….

One of the collections, a collection of Golden Currant, is the prettiest picture I have from the whole month! I mean look at those veins.

But I have surprisingly no pictures of flowers this month that are blog worthy. A sign that the flowers are on their way out for the season? Already?

Recently, I’ve found myself missing flowers than I saw back in April and May (cactus blooms, my old friends) that I won’t be able to see again until next spring. The flowers that I saw on my first camping trip of the season where I hiked barefoot with my sweetie for 5 miles through a sandy desert canyon crisscrossing a stream that was coming back to life as the snowmelt from the La Sals resupplied its flow. The flowers that represent the reawakening of the natural world, where outside becomes inviting and beautiful again.

Cactus blooms- Echinocereus ssp.

I’ve been noticing that the longer I do field work the more I track time based on the flowers that have passed, the flowers that are in bloom, and what flowers I can still expect to see later in the season. This work requires a heightened awareness of phenology and I have come to enjoy keeping time in this way. But what happens when the phenology isn’t noticeably progressing anymore, when everyone closes up shop to wait out the cold? As we come to a time where more of the flowers are behind us than ahead, I begin to confront the dread I feel for the impending winter season.

I’ve been attempting to prepare my brain to learn to appreciate what winter has to offer (what does winter have to offer?) since the beginning of the season, since the end of last winter really. I’ve noted things that I only spend time doing in the winter, clothes I only wear in the winter: the coziness of taking a bundled up walk along a frozen lake before coming home to our warm apartment, the comfort of then making hot chocolate and playing a board game.

But all of a sudden it’s looking like I won’t have to deal with as much of a winter for the next few years. I have been offered a permanent position in a mysterious location where winter doesn’t mean snow….will the growing season be longer? Will there be a chance to grow foods I’ve never been able to grow before? Will I be able to do my favorite summer activities for more of the year? Will sitting outside possibly even feel pleasant in January? So many things to wonder about and soon I will know the answers!

My sisters visiting me in Utah, a lovely winter memory.

A Glance at August…

Boy was this a busy one. We started the month with monitoring the pollinator islands that were established in landing sites throughout the forest last year. One of the goals was, of course, to remediate the land that was cut down and compacted from tons of lumber. However, another goal was to essentially build a pollinator bridge – to bring the pollinators from the forest and encourage them to head down to the farms below. Our purpose was to perform line point intercept in order to understand how the landscape is changing after planting and seeding last year. The seed mix was a very long list of all the different native pollinator-friendly species in the forest and so far it seems like most of the plots are doing well. The hard part about seeds though is that it can be tough to judge the success in the first year because many seeds won’t come up the following season, and could possibly not come up for multiple years. So even if the seed success isn’t impressive the year after planting, that doesn’t mean the project is not a success in the long term.

First day on the monitoring grind!

We spent a while monitoring these 17 plots, but to break things up, we had a cross-over episode with the Beaverhead-Deerlodge botany team at the Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness. They taught us all about how to survey for bees – where to find them, how to catch them, and what to do with them after. This was also my first time backpacking!

Bitterroot botany team takin on the wilderness!

From here, we did a bit of surveying. We focused on areas that have planned pesticide treatment, and we looked at historic populations that may be in the area. Although we didn’t find anything, we got some great views! Other than that we also worked on some timber seed pilot monitoring, where we looked at seeded skid trails and temp roads to see how the grasses are growing in. Most were pretty successful, with Bromus, Psedoroegneria, and Elymus being the most common. We have been working on a bunch of these plots in two finished timber projects, one on the west side of the forest, and one on the east side. So far, these plots have been quite promising, but we will see in thee coming years how the seed mix is working.

Lil ol’ me checking the species for this LPI

Last, but of course not least, we have spent days and days working on seed collection. We have collected about 30 different populations – most on the smaller side. There are still lots of plants that we are waiting to collect, but I’m surprised at the amount that we have found ready. I hope this next month we will get some larger populations!

Eriogonum umbellatum and a peek at the Sapphires.

Smoke Everywhere!

Oh, August you could not get smokier if you truly tried (this is in fact not true at all as it’s supposed to get worse next month). Waking up to pillars of smoke covering the sky was something I wasn’t entirely ready to get used to when I moved out to Oregon. The AQI of the closest major city, Eugene, this past week reached a total of 450. Just to be clear, that measure is part of the maroon category also known to be hazardous to human health. The effects can certainly be felt.

Mount Thielsen

Other than hazardous smoke conditions the Umpqua has been beautiful as usual. Everyday feels like a surprise in this forest. You never truly know what beautiful spectacle you’ll get to witness. Some of our collection sites are truly like working in a mirage. These incredible sites are surrounded by some of the most picturesque collection species. Not only this but most collection sites have a wide breadth of species to collect from. As we have a target list of around 30-40 species, these luscious meadows hold the key to most of our success. My personal favorite of these habitats are the hidden alpine meadows we’re to collect many of our September/October species from.

Our weed treatment adventure continues as well. One of the worst treatments so far occurred this past month. A couple of coworkers and I ventured out to the infamous Poo Lagoon (wastewater dumping site). The task at hand was incredibly daunting. The major focus here was the Common mullein which surrounded the multiple waste pools. Laced between these stands of mullein, however, were some of the vilest stands of Canada thistle imaginable. These low-lying pests numbered in the thousands hidden underneath the water-fed grasses. As well, since Canada thistle is rhizomatous, we were not allowed to just pull and move, we had to individually cut each stem with hand loppers. If fire restrictions were not at their strictest, we might have been able to use brush cutters. Coupled with this was the 105 degrees heat that made it incredibly difficult to function. But we all made it out alive and that’s all you can truly ask for.

Clark’s nutcracker on top of whitebark pine

Personal events this past month saw my mental health slightly deteriorate. It’s truly a shame of the personal struggles because this experience has been nothing short of incredible. Unfortunately, sometimes you can’t control the events that unfold. These events leave you feeling absolutely abandoned in a place that was already foreign to begin with and all you can do is try to dig yourself out of the hole that makes you feel so powerless. It’s difficult but you have to do it because you can’t keep living your life in the gallows of past events. You must push through it because nobody else will do it for you. Sometimes life just hits you with the hardest metal pipe to the knees unexpectedly. You fall and have no choice but to get back up, of course after feeling the immense amount of pain from the initial hit for a considerable amount of time. Eventually you’ll get back up from being beaten and the pain will progressively get easier to handle, although it will always linger. This is just a roundabout way of saying that unfortunately life can be incredibly unfair, but most of the time you can’t control it. You just have to keep going until it gets better.

I truly hope each intern had an incredible month. For those who finished their term this month, congratulations. For those that are still along the journey like Casey and I, only a few more months until it’s over. Make the best of the time that we have with these incredible opportunities.

Crater Lake
Alpine meadow
My coworker Alejandro and I fixing a tire

Hells Canyon and High Water – August in Council Idaho

Ergot fungus on blue bunch wheatgrass
Sterile hybrid between two of our target species, blue bunch wheatgrass and bottlebrush squirreltail

First seed shipment to Coeur d’Alene Nursery

Levi immediately after attempting to climb Clematis vine
Levi realizing his dreams will never come true…
Mormon crickets attempting to eat a lupine seed bag
Grasshoppers and crickets eating my backpack
Checking Sulphur-flower buckwheat for seed fill

I am writing this monthly post while holed up in the community library hiding from a storm that seemingly came out of nowhere. The minor flooding and landslides are the price paid for relief from the wildfire season that was reaching its peak when broken just in time. The smoke and oppressive heat previously settling over both forests is gone for the time being, but now we wait for the roads and woods to dry before resuming our search. With only three viable collections left in the field we have transitioned back again into primarily scouting. The summer has passed and fall colors have begun to set in on the lowest and most productive sites. The Council team is now searching further, higher, and more intensely for remaining target species. It has become clear that some of our target species will not be successfully collected this year. To combat the difficulties of the situation our mentors have given us permission for recollections of species already targeted, and independence in determining additional species for collection. The new policies have allowed our team to target Columbine flavescens, start scouting western-coneflower for collection, and recollect a superior population of Columbia needlegrass. The added diversity will help us remain productive as our season progresses. Disease like the fungus pictured above, and pests like the mormon crickets on our lupine would have been intimidating setbacks for me at the beginning of the season. Now, these problems seem more and more manageable as I gain experience and familiarity with the two forests I am assigned to. As I look at the reddening maple outside the window, I see the branches oscillating with the gusts and leaves shuttering. Soon the tree will stand motionless again, and the Boise – Payette team will be back out and searching.

Highly Variable Landscapes Wont Get Us Down

Thus far, August has been the most profitable month for seed collection. We are finding that most of our populations are nearly ready, already collectable, or past at this point in the season. This makes for two quite scattered seed collectors! It’s difficult to be in many places at once, and seemingly more difficult to make a decision about where is the most profitable place to spend our days. Of course, there is some rhyme and reason to it all; we consider the location of the population (elevation, moist/dry area, shaded or exposed), the timing of flowering/seeding of other populations in the area or other populations of the same species, and which populations to prioritize based on size/profitability as well as species we may have already collected enough populations. Despite knowing to consider all these different factors, it is still possible we may make the wrong call, simply as a result of the highly variable landscapes that exist in and among the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forests.

We do not, however, let this get us down!

We are professionals in our field with the knowledge that each of us is doing the very best that we can to accomplish this incredibly important work we have been called to do. We work with the knowledge that there is no ‘one size fits all’ for this type of work, as there are many factors out of our control, especially as we make our way into fall and the rainy season.

In an effort to combat these highly variable factors and put our knowledge as native plant materials collectors to good use, we have called on some backup. Fortunately for us, the Wildlife crew that works out of the same office as us has had a bit of a lull in work between projects at the very moment that we are experiencing the height of our season. It has been awfully convenient to the point that I wonder if maybe it was planned this way by our very experienced boss. In reality, I think luck would just have it that way. Regardless, this recruitment of even just two (sometimes four) extra individuals really increases the flow and productivity of our work. Typically, my counterpart and I will split up and each take one to two extra individuals with us to separate locations/populations that are in need of collection. This allows us to cover more ground in a timely manner, taking advantage of ripe seed crops as they become available, because, well, they don’t typically wait!

This addition of extra help is wonderful because we can get more done in a day, however, this is just a small portion of the extent to which this supports our efforts. I also find this addition helpful because it requires us to explain to other very thoughtful and considerate people the ins and outs of collection. Not only does this reiterate the requirements and the procedure for me again, but teaching others about this process inevitably brings up questions or comments from those learning, and gives me another perspective with which to look at the collection scenario at-hand. This is especially helpful when working with our crews here at the Belt Creek Ranger Station because each of them are incredibly attentive and committed to providing their services to the best of their abilities. They are advocates for the forest and its many inhabitants and care deeply for their vigorous persistence into the future. Truly inspiring and thought- provoking individuals alongside whom I am so very delighted to work.