I was finally able to use all the comp time that piled up over the season and I have to say, it was well worth the extra hours. A few weeks ago I took a trip to the Grand Canyon National Park. It was incredible. Similar to the vibrant colors of a tropical ocean, no photograph can portray the overwhelming visual stimulation that accompanies a real life experience at the grand canyon. This was definitely the highlight of my summer. 

Aside from a great vacation, work continues to stay busy. Minus the intimidating stack of herbarium vouchers to organize and send, Seeds of Success has finally come to an end for the 2014 season. Tackling this endeavor independently has taught me a lot. It has forced me to take initiative, ask a lot of questions, keep an organized schedule and be patient. It was not an easy task however, the sense of accomplishment and professional growth that I have developed made every minute worth it. Perhaps the greatest lesson I learned was to be patient and know that field work typically does not go as planned. There will always be obstacles and set backs but if you learn to be flexible, innovative and make decisions on the fly, everything will work out in the end. Just stick with it.

The weather is changing quickly but there is still plenty of work to be done. The seed we ordered for Emergency Stabilization and Rehabilitation has been slow to arrive. It has been a bit of a nightmare trying to track down each shipment and simultaneously organize the workforce necessary to complete the planting. We have completed a few hundred acres of drill seeding and there is more to be done.  However, our seed shipments were backed up and we no longer have access to the equipment or work staff for this season. On top of that, the snow has already begun to fly and it is a race against the clock. Focusing on broadcast seeding and hand planting will bring us to the end of our field season very soon.

It has been a whirlwind trying to keep up with the daily operations at the Surprise Valley Field Office due to very limited staff.  However, I have been given more opportunities than I could ask for, which I am overwhelmingly grateful for. I will continue to work for Surprise through the winter, acquiring new skills and facing new challenges every day. This experience continues to impress me and I encourage anyone with an interest in conservation and land management to apply for this program.

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Amy Thorson- BLM Surprise Valley FO

Fall brought some drastic changes to my life here in Carson City. The first time my gloves froze to my handlebars, I knew I was in for a dramatic couple months. In September, a tiny kitten, not more than 5 weeks old, moved into the space between the insulation and the floorboards of my house. After 2 days of quiet mewing echoing up through the heating vents, I decided that our new housemate needed to move upstairs. Andrii (another intern), Oksana (his wife), and I rent a prefab house on the eastern edge of town. We’ve loved this shabby little place since the very first day we moved in. Unfortunately, the house hasn’t really loved us back. A leaky roof, dripping pipes, hidden mold, ant infestations, fruit fly swarms; we’ve had it all. 2 weeks after we moved in, our kitchen mysteriously disappeared one evening. We got back from the field to discover our refrigerator was not where we had left it! And now it appeared that, to top it all off, we had a critter in distress somewhere below our feet. I donned my PPE (I didn’t take the DOI learn HAZWOPER course for nothing!) and army-crawled into the dust and grime. I made it out wheezy, sneezy, and clutching a new best friend. We called him Griffey or Kits, after the famous baseball player and the Ukrainian word for “hey cat!” He has quickly become accustomed to the pampered life of an adventurous kitten.

After such drastic changes in weather and family structure, a change in employment really shouldn’t faze me. But after 9 months living, tromping, and adventuring in the sagebrush and the sierras, it’s a shock to the system to consider leaving.

Carson City is where I learned to monitor fires, to assess riparian habitats, to identify great basin flora, and why the coyotes cry to the stars at night. My tent has been my home in the dunes of Death Valley, the granite slabs of Yosemite, the canyons of Dixie Valley, and almost everywhere in between. I’ve gawked and gasped at innumerable stunning plants, from the delicate blooms of the rare Webber’s ivsia (Ivsia webberi) to the ancient wisdom of the bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva). “Oodles” doesn’t even come close to the amount I’ve learned and experienced.

I owe a tremendous debt to my mentor, Dean, and our fantastic team. Whether we were fixing flats, purposefully getting stung by fiddleneck (Amsinkia tesselata), or searching mountains for rebar and rare plants, they helped me maintain my positive attitude and appreciate every moment in the lovely landscape. When times got tough or the plants got feisty, these excellent people always had my back.

For Science!

Rebecca Mostow
Sierra Front Field Office, BLM
Carson City, NV

Hello Everyone!

My CLM position here in the Mojave Desert has continued into the late fall, and I’ll be here at least until mid-December. Maybe even longer. Like everywhere else in the country, the days have become shorter and colder here. Unlike most other places, our daytime high temperatures are still in the 70’s and 80’s. I could say that the nighttime temps in the 40’s feel pretty cold to me, but my friends and family back in Illinois probably won’t let me get away with that. But after the oppressive heat of summer, it is delightful to have weather that makes everyone else jealous.

Ericameria paniculata (Mojave rabbitbrush)

Of course, the ecology of the desert is changing with the seasons, and one of the interesting things that I’m seeing is that the plant life here is staying active even as we move into winter. I’m used to plants that have hunkered down into dormancy by this time of year. That is not the case here in the Mojave. There are a few plants that have dropped their leaves during the dry autumn, but most have remained unchanged in anticipation of winter rains. Some species are still holding seeds, and some are even in full bloom right now! I was in a wash this week that was full of the yellow flowers of two shrubs that I am just now seeing in bloom for the first time. I think that is great.

The continuing reproductive activity of the plants means that I have been able to stay busy making seed collections in November. Here are some highlights:

Ericameria paniculata (Mojave rabbitbrush). These plants absolutely glow in the evening sun. It is quite lovely.

Many of the big washes in my field office have turned into rivers of golden yellow this fall, as they have been filled with blooming Ericameria paniculata (Mojave rabbitbrush). This species is a shrub in the Asteraceae family. It grows as a round bush up to about 2 meters tall, and 3 to 4 meters wide. The blooming rabbitbrush has created some absolutely beautiful landscapes in the last month or so, especially in the late afternoons and evenings. This one was an easy collection to make, as the plants contained tens of thousands of their fluffy, wind-dispersed seeds. The plants are pretty sticky and pungent with a strong but sweet smell, so I ended up smelling like Ericameria for the rest of the day, which was fine with me.

Ericameria paniculata (Mojave rabbitbrush). These seeds were just about to fly off to who knows where before I snatched them up.

Another very easy collection that I made a couple weeks ago was of Chilopsis linearis arcuata (desert willow). This species is not a true willow (willows are the genus Salix), but it is a tree with narrow linear leaves that look similar to Salix. Chilopsis linearis is more closely related to Catalpa trees. Desert willows produce long, thin seed pods that are loaded with 50 or more seeds that have dense, white, tufts of hair. When these trees were blooming earlier in the year their white, pink, or purple flowers were very popular with sphinx moths (also called hawk moths). These moths look very much like hummingbirds in the way they hover around flowers. For a week in August, thousands of sphinx moths congregated around the desert willows, so that you could hear the air buzzing with their wing beats. Those were amazing days.

Chilopsis linearis (desert willow). You can see that the leaves do look pretty similar to true willows.

Chilopsis linearis (desert willow). Here are a couple of seed pods that are just about ready to burst open.

Here’s one more for now. Last week I made a collection of Sphaeralcea angustifolia (copper globemallow). This species is a forb that I’ve seen growing to just shy of 1 meter in height. Last week was the first time I have come across this species, but the population I found was pretty impressive. Thousands and thousands of copper globemallow covered the shallow wash I was exploring. That makes for some easy collecting. A few of the plants were still blooming, and showing off their very pretty orange flowers, but most were full of their unusual fruits. If you look at the picture I’ve included, you can see the seed capsules, which some people will describe as little cheese wheels. When they open up, those capsules will drop 10-20 small seeds to the ground. As I finished this collection with the light fading and temperature dropping in the late afternoon, one of my coworkers made an observation. Many of the remaining orange flowers on the Sphaeralcea now contained a bee. The bees weren’t buzzing around collecting nectar, but instead had curled up inside the flowers and were sitting still. My coworker said that they would sleep that way through the night. I had never seen bees do this before, and I thought it was really cool!

Sphaeralcea angustifolia (copper globemallow).

Sphaeralcea angustifolia (copper globemallow). Notice the “cheese wheel” fruits on this plant. Kind of quirky.

All right, that’s enough for now. All you people in colder climates, stay warm!

Ericameria paniculata (Mojave rabbitbrush)

Until next time,

-Steve

Needles Field Office, BLM

Time has flown by; the last 10 months have been jammed pack with various forms of experience. This experience involved weed mapping, range assessments, drought monitoring, fire monitoring, sensitive species monitoring, herbarium management, native seed collections, various trainings and data management. While working in Nevada we ran into many interesting things, these many interesting things proved that Nevada is random. Here are a few examples:

An old building from an abandoned farm.

An old miners cup found at an old site.

A tree carrying a heart that was carved into it a long time ago.

Sometimes while working you find yourself in the middle of Fire Suppression practice.

Just another vehicle on the road… an armored vehicle.

A full belt of bullets that was discarded and still rests under an Artemisia.

In the middle of nowhere there is a random hot spring.

A random red gate that pops out of nowhere.

These are only a few of the random things that Nevada provided. Nevada definitely became a wonderful source of entertainment while we worked. Thank you  Nevada.

Having a blast seed sucking

Time has really flown. I feel like I have seen every season Montana has to offer; from the blazing mid summer heat to the frigid sub-zero temperatures coupled with ceaseless winds. I have learned so much about the Northwestern Great Plains and I have really grown fond of them. I came in knowing nothing about the plants of this area, but working with many range people and other experts in botany, these plants have become my family. This internship has been challenging at times; I did feel like I was thrown into this seed collecting project on my own, and it was a little daunting.  I knew nothing about these plants and I was worried that it may very well take me a summer to learn them all, let alone know when their seeds will be ripe. Luckily, my mentor had faith that I would complete it and do it well, and I’d like to think I actually did alright. I began to realize that I was surrounded by smart, kind, helpful people and that was something I got better at; asking others for help and offering up my help so I could learn from them. So that is my advice to new interns; ask a lot of questions and don’t be afraid to sound stupid because you are still an intern, you’re allowed to be. I am so thankful to have met so many wonderful people who work hard at managing these lands whose jobs are never ending and thankless. I haven’t yet decided if I’d want to continue working with the BLM, but I do know that this internship confirmed my passion for plants and allowed me to look at plants in terms of how they relate to animals and the people that use the land.
Thank you Chicago Botanic Garden for this opportunity, it has been swell.

snow!

It seems like only yesterday that I made my perilous journey out west, braving hazardous weather conditions in our tiny BMW and Penske truck full of furniture.  It was a little difficult finding a way out here. I have a little boy, who is now 5. He, my boyfriend, and I moved all the way across the country. My boyfriend had to attain permission to work remotely from his company in Chicago, and I had to find my son a new school. There was a lot to consider, but I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to get my foot in the door and gain new jobs skills, so my family supported me, and I am very grateful to them for that.  I remember finally arriving, and being taken back by the new and different landscape that laid before me.  I wasn’t used to the desert, let alone alone mountains.

I knew nothing about the vegetation in the Great Basin in the beginning, I hardly knew how to identify sagebrush. However, as time progressed, my botanical skills became stronger, and I was able to indentify most flora on sight.  Trips to the University of Nevada Reno herbarium helped me to improve my taxonomy skills, as well as my verification skills. When fire season began, I picked up on many new protocols and also builded on my growing botanical skills. I really enjoyed conducting education outreach events as well. It was great to share my knowledge with the general public and the youth, and it was great to see their curiosity and enthusiasm. I have seen some breath taking sights out west, and those memories will remain in my memories forever.

I’ve met some great people from all over the country, and other countries for that matter. We are all now going our seperate ways, and it’s a little sad, but it is also a new begininning. I have gained many skills through this internship, and hopefully this will assist me in finding the perfect job in the perfect place.

“Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.”

In light of the approaching holiday season and the conclusion of my internship I have written a song, with the help of the other interns, to summarize my internship. I have tried to incorporate parts of all of the major aspects of my internship; my time was divided mostly into SOS collections and fire monitoring. Our field work contained many adventures with rugged mountain roads, wildlife, and inclement weather. I am thankful for the great opportunities this internship program has given me to gain professional work experience and skills. I will be leaving Carson City, NV at the end of the week with fond memories and ambition to further my career as a botanist!

12 Days of Seed Collecting (to the tune of 12 Days of Christmas)

On the first day of seed collecting
My mentor gave to me:
A plant press in a juniper tree.

On the second day of seed collecting
My mentor gave to me:
Two GPSs
And a plant press in a juniper tree.

On the third day of seed collecting
My mentor gave to me:
Three soil samples
Two GPSs
And a plant press in a juniper tree.

On the fourth day of seed collecting
My mentor gave to me:
Four pruning sheers
Three soil samples
Two GPSs
And a plant press in a juniper tree.

On the fifth day of seed collecting
My mentor gave to me:
Five ER-NA*
Four pruning sheers
Three soil samples
Two GPSs
And a plant press in a juniper tree.

On the sixth day of seed collecting
My mentor gave to me:
Six cows a grazin’
Five ER-NA
Four pruning sheers
Three soil samples
Two GPSs
And a plant press in a juniper tree.

On the seventh day of seed collecting
My mentor gave to me:
Seven sage a seedin’
Six cows a grazin’
Five ER-NA
Four pruning sheers
Three soil samples
Two GPSs
And a plant press in a juniper tree.

On the eighth day of seed collecting
Eight interns camping
Seven sage a seedin’
Six cows a grazin’
Five ER-NA
Four pruning sheers
Three soil samples
Two GPSs
And a plant press in a juniper tree.

On the ninth day of seed collecting
My mentor gave to me:
Nine weeds a mappin’
Eight interns camping
Seven sage a seedin’
Six cows a grazin’
Five ER-NA
Four pruning sheers
Three soil samples
Two GPSs
And a plant press in a juniper tree.

On the tenth day of seed collecting
My mentor gave to me:
Ten fires finished
Nine weeds a mappin’
Eight interns camping
Seven sage a seedin’
Six cows a grazin’
Five ER-NA
Four pruning sheers
Three soil samples
Two GPSs
And a plant press in a juniper tree.

On the eleventh day of seed collecting
My mentor gave to me:
Eleven roads a washed out
Ten fires finished
Nine weeds a mappin’
Eight interns camping
Seven sage a seedin’
Six cows a grazin’
Five ER-NA
Four pruning sheers
Three soil samples
Two GPSs
And a plant press in a juniper tree.

On the twelfth day of seed collecting
My mentor gave to me:
Twelve PVC pipes
Eleven roads a washed out
Ten fires finished
Nine weeds a mappin’
Eight interns camping
Seven sage a seedin’
Six cows a grazin’
Five ER-NA
Four pruning sheers
Three soil samples
Two GPSs
And a plant press in a juniper tree

*Ericameria nauseosa, a common shrub of the Great Basin.

Mary

CCDO

Much like our window for preventing the Earth from becoming a big, stormy swimming pool, my CLM internship is soon coming to a close. There were laughs (both “at” and “with”), there were tears (both “of sadness” and “in all of my work shirts”), there were many, many tins of smelly kipper snacks eaten in the field. I am grateful to have had the privilege of working with dedicated, loving, and mostly hygienic people who consistently brightened my days with warmth and affection.

My colleagues were undoubtedly the heart and soul of a most memorable field season in Groveland, CA, but the shock and awe of surveying the vast swaths of scorched moonscapes that had once been shiny-green conifer stands of the Stanislaus National Forest will not soon be forgotten—burned into memory, if you will.

“Hey, why did someone replace all the lush crowns of pine and fir trees with acre upon acre of gangly, black sticks that look like the burnt skeletons of creepy scarecrows?”, is what I assume we were all thinking on our first day in the field. It was soon explained to me by Google that the “someone” was the 2013 Rim Fire and the “why” was because that’s what historically massive, high-intensity fires do.

It was a sight to behold, certainly. Some of my coworkers thought that the toasted hills and grilled valleys were still beautiful, but just in a different sort of way. Okay, I think I can understand that. Like how a Jackson Pollock is beautiful, just in a different, less beautiful sort of way than pretty much any other painting.

Though I tried to see beauty in the destruction, the pleasure I derived from our newly redecorated forest was not from the multitude of charred things everywhere. I was quite taken, however, with the absence of a pesky understory that normally inhibits one’s ability to walk through a decadent forest without constantly tripping and getting poked in the face by twigs. It had all been burned away! The simple act of leisurely strolling from A to B instead of army-crawling and bush-whacking my way there was proof enough for me that there was a bright side to the effects of the Rim Fire.

And there were other benefits of working in the burn zone all season. Through the month of June we found ample flushes of black morels (Morchella sp.) almost daily. Did we leave them be, in accordance with the Forest Service’s foraging policy for employees (and because of our unfair advantage over the public, to whom this year’s unprecedented MOREL-TOPIA was not legally accessible)? I’m going to go with: “Yes, we did.”

But, as a less cliché-prone writer wouldn’t say, the season was not without its challenges. Do you remember the tears I mentioned in the opening paragraph? They were real. We shed real tears (figuratively) over the shortcomings of our vehicle fleet, the odor that descended upon our cramped office space, 30-crewmembers deep, at the end of the day, and the overall charlie foxtrot that was our grasp on protocol and logistics for a not-so-brief portion of the season. Did we dwell on the myriad speed bumps and misfires? Perhaps, but only in confidence.

Our crew soared to great botanical heights, lifting our sensitive plant brethren out of darkness and casting a cleansing light on the plague of noxious weeds. Each and every day the Botany Superteam of Groveland was out there flaggin’ and GPSin’ all kinds of sexy plants: slenderstem monkeyflower (Mimulus filicaulis [aka Mimulus phil collins]), mountain lady’s slipper (Cypripedium montanum), yellowlip pansy monkeyflower (Mimulus pulchellus), and a bunch of Clarkia spp. all over the dang place. Seriously, that stuff was everywhere.

What else can be said about my 2014 CLM internship? Probably nothing blog-worthy, to be honest.  Well, there was that one day when I walked around for half an hour with a lizard in my hard hat.  But I will say this: even though glimpsing the inner workings of a small slice of the federal government gave me a new and unsettling understanding of what libertarians are so mad about, and aside from the nauseating stench of bear clover (Chamaebatia foliolosa) on all our boots, it was a (mostly) rewarding and productive experience. Not to mention the hilarious “dirt leggings” we wore at the end of each day from walking through so much dust.

At last, if I may, I will sum up the entire season with the best joke I heard all summer: What is the best thing about Switzerland?  I dunno but its flag is a big plus.

Chris McCoy
Groveland District Office
US Forest Service

Hello Friends, Family, and others,

The past three months I have been working as a botanist with the Carson City District Office (BLM). It has really opened my eyes to the importance of conservation, and the general complexity of Nevada ecosystems. Coming in, I was new to an already established crew of six who welcomed a co-worker and me with friendly smiles and helpful attitudes. At once, I felt like I belonged to the group. It has been nothing short of a great time, spending days out in the field with a large group of friends, while still being productive. I came in knowing relatively little about Botany. I had worked with plants in the field before, and understood basic cycles and cues for matured seed, however identifying plants and keying them out were novel tasks. I took them in stride and now, at the end of three months, I have learned the majority of plants we have encountered over the season, as well as successfully able to key out plants. Learning these new skills, as well as practicing old ones has been a wonderful experience. Every time I would get tired, or annoyed, it was so easy to lean back, and study the beautiful surroundings and appreciate just being there.

Two interns look at seed viability of Atriplex with a stunning view

Regardless, I have seen awesome wildlife between snakes, scorpions, a tarantula, many hawks, a few eagles, a bear cub, and many other less memorable animals. This internship has been a ton of fun and I couldn’t have asked for a better time.

Signing out, and have a Thanksgiving stuffed with eating,
Ari

Winter is rapidly setting in and it feels as if it has been nudging me out of the field and back into the office.  Well the weather isn’t solely to blame for this, it is also due to my appointment coming to an end and needing to catch up on miscellaneous office work that I have put off for the past 8 months and working on the SOS end of the year wrap up.  But I like to think of if more as the forceful winter chill laying down its icy fist and forbidding me from collecting anymore seeds…

My time working for the Medford, OR BLM is rapidly coming to an end.  It has been a great season of opportunity for me to expand my botanical knowledge and learn about how difference agencies function, bureaucratically as well as biologically.  I gained valuable skills pertaining to surveying, report writing, and communicating with the public as well as other employees within the agencies, all while upholding a professional demeanor.

I spent over 3 weeks in October leading a crew of 8 convicts in a reseeding project of a burnt up forest.  We reseeded some BLM plots within the 36,000 burn zone.  We successfully reseeded over 1,100 of those acres, using  over 14,000 pounds of native grass and forb seeds.  This was a great learning experience both being a crew leader, as well as working with convicts.  This may have been the most enjoyable project I have worked on since starting this internship.  I definitely feel it was the most enriching, granting me an opportunity that I don’t think I would otherwise have been able to experience. This project did not only help me gain people skills but I also utilized some scientific method by setting up 50 picture plot points in order to to back for the next few years and monitor the successes of the project.   It is too bad I won’t be around to watch these grasses grow!