It is hard to believe that we are already halfway through December, which means we have one week left in Marlinton before we head home and work remotely until the new year. We have collected more than enough seeds from the available populations from our species list and are spending our final weeks here processing the last few buckets-full of American mountain ash, ironweed, Clematis virginiana, closed-bottle gentian and smooth alder. We may still go out collecting, but only for those seeds which persist into the winter and require minimal processing time: ironweed, staghorn sumac, C. virginiana. By the end of next week, we will have delivered all of our perennial woody plant seeds to Appalachian Headwaters where they will be stored and propagated over the next year. Our annuals will be stored here in Marlinton, since they can be cultivated in situ through wind dispersal and scattering.
A mature red spruce forest (Red Spruce Knob, Pocahontas County, WV)
Amanita flavoconia or “Yellow patches” – a mycorrhizal fungus found in mature red spruce forests. Mycorrhizae connect trees through a network of underground fungal mycelium and allow them to exchange nutrients and hormonal messaging across the landscape.
We have collected thousands upon thousands of seeds during these past few months. It is quite amazing to see the totals: 14,000 seeds of alternate-leaf dogwood, over 15,000 seeds of closed-bottle gentian, and 15,000 of southern mountain cranberry. Even for species that were scantly populated (catberry, for instance) we’ve collected over a thousand seeds. Our repository will serve as a reservoir of plant life used to pioneer forest succession on strip mines in the Monongahela for years to come. In turn, the plants that grow from our seeds will impact this forest for centuries. Heck, millennia! Theoretically, the seeds we’ve collected will act as the first catalysts in the succession of an enduring red spruce forest. These plants can withstand young soils and grow in direct sunlight, and over the next decade they will morph the rocky restoration site into a haven of biodiversity. Birds and other pollinators will consume and disperse the second generation of seeds across the site, reallocating nutrients to the stripped, rocky soil and forming essential foundations for early-succession tree species. As large trees take hold in the newly rich soil, they will shade out the earliest pioneer species from our seed stock, forming an early-succession broadleaf forest. Eventually, red spruce will grow up in the shaded understory of this forest, transforming its soil composition into a deep humus layer filled with mycorrhizal fungi that push out early pioneer species and favor the dominance of late-succession coniferous tree species, and plants that can survive in the dark understory.
One must zoom out at least one hundred years to see how our daily efforts will endure. Three generations from now, visitors may come across Sharp’s Knob and walk upon a cushion of moss and knee-deep duff teeming with a root network of ectomycorrhizal fungi. Maybe they will breathe the cool, terpene-scented air found only in a copse of red spruce, their eyes comfortably shaded by the dense canopy above. Perhaps they, too, will collect fruits, but instead in the form of Vaccinium berries, mayapples, mushrooms, spruce cones. And on the way out, they’re bound to drop a few on the ground, dispersing the next generation of forest flora.
Good news from the JTGP CLM team! We are gearing up our baby Joshua Tree’s for their final transplant into the Common Garden sites across the Mojave. These little ones have come a long way and look very official with their field-ready metal tags.
A group of JTs that are ready for their final tag–these long, finely serrated leaves are so wonderful to see–and to think they all started off as tiny, grass-thin cotyledon.M. Beadle and N. Filannino working through the tagging process. We’ve all taken ‘ownership’ of a section of the plants in the GH. Its been great to become familiar with the layout and plants within our sections, especially now that so many of them are big!
We still have some maternal lines that are struggling to grow and it will be interesting to see if they pull through or if they simply won’t get to Gardens. As we all know by now: plant research is a dynamic and patient process! All tagged JTs will be transplanted in the gardens over this winter and will have at least a year to grow and develop in their given environments before JTGP leading scientists start to collect genetic and phenological from them (While my group of CLM JTGP interns will be long gone by then, I am excited to check in with our PIs and hear how everything is going in the Gardens).
Because our time here is quickly coming to an end our team has also been super busy organizing, cleaning up and structuring the many data we have been collecting over the past five months. We’ve mastered excel and dabbled in R and are continuing to develop and analyze the loads of info we have on the germination and growth of our JTs.
The view on my last day of fieldwork. I had a relaxing day collecting utilization data with my coworker LeeAnn.
I can’t believe my time with the BLM is coming to an end! It seems like I only just got to Boise, and now I am embarking on a road trip back home to Austin. I am currently writing this post from Ohlone land, in the ancestral territory of the Muwekma and Ramaytush Ohlone (otherwise known as San Francisco). I have also been wrapping up some data management and writing for the office remotely the past couple of weeks.
Even though it seems like time has flown by this summer, I leave Idaho with so much new knowledge and excitement. While I started this internship with no prior experience in the sagebrush steppe and with minimal exposure to land management, I leave acquainted with the plants of this ecosystem and feeling much more prepared to continue this work in the future. Towards the end of my internship, I even met a former CLM intern who was just hired for a full-time position in my office. It was so sweet to chat about our experiences in the program and spend time in the field together.
Even with COVID posing unique challenges, I still experienced a wide variety of life in a BLM field office: from conducting veg surveys and searching for rare plants to fence construction and riparian assessment to data analysis and writing reports. I was also able to meet permittees and see what it is like to do community outreach in the field office. I even tagged along with our geologist to experience the mineral program. I am so glad for the opportunity to intern with such a welcoming group– my mentor and all of my coworkers were so incredibly kind and knowledgeable and made me feel truly like a part of the team. It was great to work alongside them and learn about all the different parts of the field office.
The past five and a half months have been a period of growth and challenges. In such a turbulent time filled with national and international grief and uncertainty, I am incredibly grateful to have been employed doing work that I love and find meaningful. I will miss the views of the mountains and working with the plants of the high desert. Idaho is a beautiful place, and the Owyhee Field Office had so many sites to explore and plants to meet! I hope that I will be able to come back and visit in the future. Next year’s Botany conference will be in Boise (hopefully, although who knows with COVID), so I might be back in the summer.
I am not yet sure what is in store for me over the next few months, but I fully intend to spend it with loved ones and botanize as much as I can.
It finally snowed here in Marlinton, and all of the plant species on our list have officially gone to seed. We spent the past month driving north to collect from the tundra-esque Dolly Sods Wilderness and Spruce Knob, the highest points in the state. As we neared the end of October, our seed collection days shifted quickly from sunburnt, humid adventures to snowy and frigid races to the finish line. Last week at Dolly Sods, we alternated between collecting berries in sleet and jumping into the truck to blast heat on our wet-gloved hands. Collecting seed in cold weather at these higher elevations is an exhilarating experience and reminds me of late July in northern Alaska. The wind smells the same – of encroaching frost and decomposing leaves. There is overlap in foliage as well – caribou moss, stunted, leaning spruce trees and lots of lichen on bare rock. It’s quite amazing how the ecotone at high elevation bogs in West Virginia can bear resemblance to latitudes as far north as the tree line on the edge of the Arctic Circle.
Blending southern mountain cranberries before sifting out their tiny seeds
Between collection days, we clean our latest seedstock. It has been an honor to work with Morgan of Appalachian Headwaters, who has been teaching us proper technique for cleaning and storing specific seed types. We have been lucky enough to have access to the cleaning tools and facilities at Appalachian Headwaters, and we are ordering some more equipment for making the same use of our own miniature processing plant here in Marlinton.
I was surprised to find that seed cleaning is mostly intuitive and simply demands everyday resourcefulness. How do you remove cranberry seeds from all that berry pulp? Put electrical tape on the blades of an ordinary blender and chop it up, then filter it out through multiple sieves. How do you remove the outer layer of film from alternate-leafed dogwood? Rub it furiously on a screen and then pick it off with your nails. The whole process of cleaning is unexpectedly familiar, like working soil in a garden. With all that repeated movement, it’s easy to get in the zone and process your thoughts alongside the seeds as you pick seeds apart and wash away the pulp.
Heaps of seeds!
By the end of November, we will have finished up seed collection and will continue to process the seeds we’ve collected. Until next time!
Happy late October from Southern Nevada. The JTGP team is basking in balmy fall weather here and working away in the USGS greenhouse, pampering our Joshua trees. You read right: pampering. Who would have thought these magnificent plants of the Mojave would be so fussy!
You see, it turns out that some of the seeds are quite particular and have decided to fight germination with stark determination. Tucking them into nice damp soil, regulating their day and night temperature in the greenhouse, and diligently watering them makes not a difference.
They simply weren’t having it.
But, little did they know, the same thing could be said for us: we were not having their complete lack of germination.
So, we decided to treat these most persnickety seeds like the royalty that they are: laying them out on a damp filter paper in a Petri dish and setting them in a temperature regulated growth chamber to imbibe in warm darkness. We visited them twice daily to alter the chambers day-time and night-time temperatures, gently cleaned them if mold popped up, kept each filter paper nice and damp, and crossed our fingers.
And what do you know-it was just what they preferred! In no time we had lots of happy germinates.
Petri dishes chock full and ready to roll 🙂
Now, every day more and more germinates appear in the Petri dishes and we scramble to transplant them into their respective plant bands (tall, bottomless cardboard ‘pots’ that allow the Joshua tree’s roots to grow long). And our success hasn’t stopped there. These Joshua trees are (finally) pleased enough to send up bright green hypocotyls and cotyledons. Up next are primary leaves and more, each plant growing as much as possible before its final transplant into the Common Garden sites at the end of the year!
And now we know: despite initial struggles, germination is indeed possible. So grow on Joshua trees, grow on.
This germinate was a crazy surprise-check out the TWO radicles emerging! When your dealing with 3,000 seeds your bound to see some interesting growth patterns.
A few new things have happened since the last time I posted, so let me get you up to speed. After my inaugural blog post, Caroline and I went out on few more botanical surveys. Since we were still familiarizing ourselves with the plant species found throughout the Mon, we were lucky enough to have two incredibly knowledgeable botanists, Emily and Ken, at our office that were open to having us help them conduct rare plant surveys. Although Emily and Ken were nearing the end of survey season and still had a lot of land to cover, they never made our presence feel like a burden. Each of them took time to help us identify species and test our knowledge. It really gave me and Caroline a glimpse into the day-to-day of a career path that we might one day pursue. While it has been nearly a month since the last time we went out on a survey, I often find myself grateful for the fact that we were able to spend so much time with such great teachers. Just like the times we’ve had to endure intense off trail hikes through dense red spruce (Picea rubens) forests and huge patches of stinging nettle (Urtica dioica), my time with Ken and Emily will forever be etched into my memories, my knowledge base, and my heart.
Emily (foreground) took us to the boardwalk in the Cranberry Glades to check the incredible bog that harbors such a beautiful and special ecosystem.Ken guiding us through the hardest off-trail hike yet
GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS
Alternate-leaf Dogwood (Cornus alternifolia)
After a short delay and a few email exchanges, we were finally on the track to go out to the field to collect seed! With the help of our mentor, Amy Lovell, we were able to connect and meet up with the lead botanist at the Bartow office, Todd Kuntz (about two hours away from the Marlinton office). Before meeting Todd, Caroline and I heard nothing but great things about him from our coworkers; so our expectations we’re pretty high! On our first outing with Todd, he took us to the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area. It was a whirlwind of a day where Todd taught us heaps of knowledge about the plants’ growth habits and seeding patterns.
The following week, we met up with Todd again to collect some new species. Little did I know, we were headed to a trail that led up to the highest point in West Virginia, Spruce Knob. Once we had reached the top, I was completely and utterly awed; not just by the height, but also by the vastness of the view before me. I felt as though I were literally on top of the world. Never in my life had I seen something so ethereal and so perfectly crafted by the Earth. That moment was a beautiful conclusion to a wonderful day of picking seed and picking Todd’s brain about everything related to Allegheny plants.
Although I haven’t yet returned to Spruce Knob, I continue I relish the memories of being on the top of world and yearn to bask again in her glory. May we meet again, Spruce Knob.
Me at the peak of Spruce Knob
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
The transition between botanical surveying season to seed collection was gradual, and only slightly overwhelming. With the main seed processing and propagation center becoming more restricted about visitors due to COVID-19, we had to rethink our expectations on how we would learn how to clean, process and store the seeds that we would be collecting over the next few months. We shifted our plans and began researching and learning the seed processing techniques on our own and designed a small scale processing center. At this point, the supplies have arrived and we are ready for setup! I am more than ecstatic about the prospect of starting from the ground up with my co-intern, Caroline. Until then, we’ll be exploring this beautiful state and gathering some seeds along the way.
Gentian spp.
Tawny Cottongrass (Eriophorum virginicum)
Developing follicles on Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)
Black Elderberry (Sambucus nigra L.) that is not quite ready
As a child growing up I was subject to weekly spelling tests. The efficacy of these tests is questionable based solely upon the amount of red lines on my screen at this very moment, however there were at least two words I never forgot to spell. Those words, of course, are desert and dessert. The trick I was taught to remember the number S’s in each word was that “you always want 2 desserts, but 1 desert is more than enough”. Thus, the letter s appears twice in the word “dessert” and only once in the word “desert”. This trick has served me well, that is until now because I have seen the desert and I would have to disagree on the notion that one desert is more than enough. Last month I had the pleasure to spend two full weeks working “in the field” in the Mojave expanse. In this paper I will argue that the spelling of the word “desert” be permanently changed to dessert so that the number of S’s reflect the beauty, and value of this incredible place.
Exhibit A: A dramatic sunrise over a Yucca (Y. brevifolia, Y. schidigera) and Blackbush (Coleogyne ramosissima) dominated landscape
I would like to predicate my arguments by explaining the reason the JTGP team found ourselves working in the desert in September. We were enlisted to help the USGS with an ongoing project working on repopulating burnt areas of the desert with Joshua Trees (Yucca brevifolia), Creosote Bush (Larrea tridentata), and Burro-weed (Ambrosia dumosa). This project is a long-term restoration project spanning many years and hundreds of plots across southern Nevada. The project is aimed not only to restore burnt areas’ vegetation, but also to document survivorship of young plants in the wild of these three species and to help contribute to the limited knowledge available to science on these matters. Over the two weeks we spent in the field we had the good fortune of visiting 5 distinct sites across the region to collect data on the survivorship of the outplants.
A typical day in the field consists of waking up at 0530 Hours for some sunrise shenanigans. My co-intern, Michele Beadle, and I shared coffee and breakfast every morning from the back of the government owned pick-up we called “home base”. After finishing up breakfast, we would load coordinates for our first plots of the day and then head off into solitude. Following gps coordinates we would then walk around and attempt to find hundreds of metal tags that correspond with individual plants, and then record the health of said plant in our PDA’s (Personal Digital Assistant). We carried out this task until the clock struck 1800 Hours, at which our team all returned from their individual plots to home base for dinner. Shortly after dinner we would go to sleep, and then repeat this the next day. While this doesn’t necessarily sound like the most thrilling schedule in the world, it is not the schedule that makes the day, but instead it is the experiences that you fill that schedule with.
Now that we have augmented the situation, and schedule we operated under during our time in the desert, we can begin to explore the exciting aspects of our experience. The first thing that needs to be noted is the breath taking landscapes. Having come from the deciduous forests of the Northeast I can comfortably say I have never seen anything like I have seen in the desert. The strange shapes and vibrant colors of a sunset over the Mojave are absolutely captivating and I have a newfound appreciation and curiosity for what I was predisposed to disregard! Traveling to every new site was an exciting proposition yielding unique landscapes, geologic structures and plant communities. I originally thought that our sites would look more alike to each other than different, but I was wrong, and I am so glad that I was.
Next I would like to mention the wildlife seen. We found a pretty impressive array of desert creatures to our delight (and surprise sometimes). Some cases in which wildlife sightings were great included our twilight observations of Great-Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus), our multiple distanced sightings of beautiful Mojave Green Rattlesnakes (Crotalus scutulatus), and the evidence of Loggerhead Shrikes (Lanius ludovicianus) marked by lizards impaled on Yucca leaves. Less positive (yet still interesting) observations would include co-intern, Josh Poland’s experience with Desert Hairy Scorpions (Hadrurus arizonensis) crawling onto him at night, and my personal experience of being jumped by a tarantula (Aphonopelma chalcodes) whilst sticking my hand into a hole in the name of science.
Exhibit B : An unlucky lizard impaled by a Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius ludovicianus)
Lastly, but not least importantly, I would like to say that the desert is a fantastic place to learn how to change a tire! On the second to last day of our tenure we found ourselves on top of a hill with three inflated tires, and one tire that had been impaled by stout branch. As we all sat outside the vehicle staring at the task ahead, our supervisor posed the question “who has never changed a tire before?”. Without hesitation Michele and I raised our hands in excitement. After about and hour or so of exploring the laws of thrust and leverage we had successfully changed the tire of our truck! This might be completely subjective, but I would like to say that learning how to change a tire was the cherry on top to the entire desert experience.
Exhibit C : Michele Beadle valiantly posing beside the tire she would soon change
All in all I would like to say that jokes aside I would implore everyone to give the desert a shot because it is more than a barren wasteland devoid of life and happiness. With the correct planning and attitude it can be one of the most interesting landscapes in the world and a place worth protecting and studying. Our time in the desert was a great change of pace from the endless world of datasheets and Joshua Tree seeds we’ve found ourselves in at the City that built the Hoover Dam. Currently we are all back home continuing our work growing plants from seed for our common garden experiment, but each of us will remember and cherish our stints working as desert ecologists last month. And I, for one, will be looking forward to my second des(s)ert experience!
P.S. The desert is also the best place to pose for an absolutely killer profile picture, just so you know….
This past weekend I attended a NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) Wilderness First Aid training here in Boise. I wanted to do this training because there have been several times where I have been out in the field, decently far from a hospital, without service. I realized that if anything were to happen, I really would have no idea what to do. Since I expect to spend more and more time outside, both for fun and work, I figured it is good for me to be prepared in case someone gets hurt.
Within the first few minutes of the class, I immediately felt out of place. During our brief introductions, where the icebreaker was to list your favorite way to get into the back-country, I realized that I was way out of my league. Almost all of the other students were back-country skiers, rock-climbers, backpackers, and mountain bikers. My nerdy, sheltered self– who broke her ankle attempting the very easiest route available at a bouldering gym– has never even seen snow, let alone ski!! I introduced myself, just said, “hiking” and then vowed to hide just how little I knew about outdoor adventuring.
Despite this rocky start, the class went well. These were two fully packed days: we learned what to do in case of cuts, burns, broken bones, sprained ankles, heatstroke, hypothermia, and more. We also learned how to be resourceful, improvising splints out of things we might have with us while out in the field. Throughout the entire weekend, we took full COVID precautions, with everyone wearing masks and gloves and checking temperatures at the door. We also were outside for the majority of the class.
Our NOLS instructor demonstrating wound care techniques on a fellow student
[Image description: two people wearing masks on a basketball court with a whiteboard, a playground, and a school building in the background. One of them (the instructor) is standing, wrapping a bandage around the student’s arm right arm.]
All of the skills we learned were put to the test as we acted out scenarios that might happen in the back-country. We took turns being the patient and care-givers, mostly working in teams of two or three. To help with making the scenarios realistic, our instructors even used wound makeup to simulate cuts, bruises, and scrapes.
Here, our instructor is demonstrating how to check for proper circulation to the feet after applying a full leg splint.
[Image description: The same instructor as in the previous image is leaning over while a different student sits with her right leg (which is wrapped in a foam pad and ace bandages) outstretched. The instructor is wearing blue gloves and touching the student’s toes, which are obscured by the makeshift splint. They are outside on a basketball court with a whiteboard behind them.]My team made our splint out of various items of clothing and a foam pad. Not the most beautiful, but functional nonetheless.
[Image description: The legs of someone sitting on a grey, gravelly surface. She is wearing grey field pants and a sandal on her left foot. Her left leg is lying so that the inside of the leg and foot faces upwards with her knee out to the side. The right leg is outstretched towards the camera, wrapped in a foam pad tied around the leg and foot with jackets, shirts, and an ace-wrap.]
I left the training Sunday evening tired but feeling much more prepared for my days in the field than I’ve ever felt before. I now know what kinds of tools to bring for different trips and how to act under different scenarios. I hope that I will never have to use these skills, but now I am more confident in my ability to deal with trips that don’t go as planned. I also feel more capable of helping people I find during my adventures. Now, instead of panicking if someone is injured, I can say, “Hi, my name is Lili, and I have wilderness first aid training. Can I help you?”
This summer has really been a crazy whirlwind and I can’t believe it’s over.
During the past couple of weeks, I have been doing a seed collection project which is part of conservation efforts to save the Sacramento Mountains checkerspot butterfly, which is an extremely rare, endangered and endemic butterfly. As the botanist on the project, I have been collecting seed from a variety of its nectar plants and most importantly its host plant, the New Mexico Penstemon (Penstemon neomexicanum). This species of penstemon is pressured greatly by cattle, elk and horse grazing in this forest, which has contributed to the butterfly’s decline, so hunting down viable fruiting individuals has preoccupied us for the last couple of weeks.
New Mexico Penstemon (Penstemon neomexicanum).View of Alamogordo from the mountains.
As my mentor is out on a fire detail and my partner injured for most of the summer, I have gotten the chance to be the lead botanist and really played an integral role in the project which has been a great learning experience and I think will benefit me in my future career. I have really enjoyed seed collecting, as I find it very relaxing, and I have gotten to see some beautiful new parts of the Forest.
Sneezeweed (Helenium hoopsii) seed. Emma and I in front of the Lincoln National Forest sign at the end of our last field day!
This week is our last week as CLM interns and I will really miss being able to hike around the Lincoln everyday. I am so thankful for my time here as I have learned so much about the flora of New Mexico and about working for a federal agency, which I know are invaluable to my future career, wherever it takes me. I have gotten to work on so many different projects, hike so many miles, meet new people, live in a new region of the country, and see countless cool, beautiful plants. I am really grateful for my time spent in the Lincoln National Forest as a CLM intern and will definitely never forget it!
The past few weeks have been exciting and full of new experiences for me. I was finally cleared by my doctor to go into the field and I have been helping Julie with a seed collection project. We were tasked with collecting seeds in an effort to protect the New Mexico Checkerspot Butterfly habitat, which is currently threatened due to excessive cattle and elk grazing. Julie and I have been driving out to different sites around the forest trying to sustainably collect seeds from a long list of potential nectar and larvae plants, including New Mexico Penstemon (Penstemon neomexicanus), Sneezeweed (Helenium hoopesii), Cut-leaf coneflower (Rudbeckia laciniata) and many more. Julie and I got to virtually attend a seed collection workshop from the Institute for Applied Ecology in Santa Fe to learn proper techniques for sustainable seed harvesting. We were assisted by a rotating crew of botanists from the Lincoln NF and even the former NM state botanist, but it was up to us to organize the collection sites and data. I really enjoyed seed collection because it was relatively relaxing and allowed us to drive to many different sites in one day. It does have some frustrating aspects, such as locating the target plants throughout the forest and making sure that we are collecting the correct species and all of the surrounding habitat data, but it is so satisfying to see how many seeds we can collect at the end of the day. I missed working outside so much and it was great to finish out the internship working on an important project with Julie. Plus, fall has arrived in NM and the leaves are starting to turn into beautiful shades of red, gold, and orange. The scenery makes me appreciate my work environment and this job so much!
Penstemon neomexicanus seed capsules
Fall colors!
This is my final week as a CLM intern! It went by so fast and even though the injury stopped me from going out in the field for a lot of the experience, I still learned a lot and had a great time in the Lincoln. I was exposed to the inner workings of a government agency, got to hike every day for work, and made a new friend in Julie. I loved being in a completely new place and learning about all of the fascinating animals and plants in the Lincoln NF, many of which are rare endemics that I will probably never see again (or until I return). The Forest Service staff were very supportive and informative – especially our supervisor/forest botanist Aurora. I learned how to conduct botanical surveys, worked on my plant ID, organized a land-use database and collected seed to save a rare butterfly! I am so grateful to have had this experience and will take all of the things I have learned on with me to the next adventure.
