Several times this summer, my co-intern, Patrick, and I have been up to Lake County, CA to scout and collect seeds on BLM Land. The interior chapparal surrounding the San Joaquin Valley is the best habitat to look for unique plant species in the region, despite being decimated by the intense drought this year.  In Lake County, we had our eyes on a particular population of Western Redbud (Cercis orbiculata), and we had already factored it into our SOS list. We kept ourselves busy as we patiently waited for the seeds to mature, but we were definitely anxious to go back. Redbud has these excellent qualities that only other SOS interns can appreciate: the plants are easily identifiable and difficult to confuse; the fruits grow at eye level; there are plenty of seeds per pod and plenty of pods per tree; there are no spines, resins, or irritating hairs; and bags of seed are lightweight, pest-free, and odorless. Yesiree, we wanted that seed.  So when the time came to pack up the truck and head out, we were horrified to hear that the night before, two wildfires had spung up on either side of the collection site.

The Wye and Walker fires blazed for nearly a week and we had no idea whether our areas of interest had been swallowed by the conflagration. Any attempts to contact the field office were answered only by messages of staff on fire duty. When the fires had been contained, there had, luckily, been little damage. Only two structures were destroyed and there was only three injuries.  The acreage burned, 7,934, was a flash in the pan compared to the larger fires seen in Colorado and elsewhere earlier this year, and all BLM areas were reopened almost immediately.

Being from the east coast, fire has never been on my radar. I had no idea what to expect. We drove up to the area and everything seemed normal, but as we rounded a corner, the scenery suddenly changed. The rolling uplands we had seen before had been transformed into an otherwordly landscape blackened, charred and covered with ash. What really piqued my interest was the realization that the fire had only engulfed one side of the highway. We were subsequently fortune in being able to complete our collections, but I couldn’t help but picture the fire crews working tirelessly to hold that line. It was amazing to me, truly-eye opening to see how a small stretch of pavement could make that difference as a fire break and how close this:

had come to looking like this:

Marc Bliss

California Plant Materials Center USDA – NRCS

At the Plant Materials Center we often recieve contracts from various BLM offices or other land management agencies to grow out a particular plant for seed. This could be for habitat restoration, fire prevention, erosion control, or myriad other purposes. We work similarly to the Bend seed cleaning facility in that collectors send us the seed they want and we clean it and do some preliminary germination and viability testing before we put it out in the field.

However, recently we recieved some western needlegrass (Achnatherum occidentale) seed from a certain half-domed National Park that had us a bit concerned. The seeds were the right size and general shape, but were dark and the awns had zero cilia– the quintessential charcteristic of A. occidentale is completely pilose awns. I, along with our other CLM Intern, was tasked in taking the seeds to the UC Davis herbarium to compare them to specimens from the same area, and after some exhaustive keying, was able to definitively state that our received seed had been misidentified.  (We have a tentative guess as to the true ID of our mystery grass, but we’ll reserve judgement until we can get a full specimen).

Although all that tedious work resulted in a simple rejection, it was incredibly satisfying to help prevent a costly and potentially detrimental mistake. It’s easy to forget how important the work that we, as interns, do. We’re not just collecting seeds and running in circles (although sometimes it feels like it); the decisions we make and the actions we take pan out to make a real impact down the line.

You might think that the satisfaction of a job well-done would be the big take-home lesson from this whole graminoidal ordeal, but for me, the memorable moment came in witnessing the misidentification by Yosemite collectors.  Thus far in my internship, three of my seed collections have turned out to be non-target, non-native, completely unusable species. I had spent hours in the field and it seemed like it was all for naught. I was getting frustrated by my fruitless endeavors (pun intended), but in seeing veteran collectors commit the same errors, I was somewhat comforted. I’m sure that you’ve all been told how “the CLM internship is a learning experience”, but until recently I forgot that a huge part of learning is failure. As long as you learn from mistakes, correcting and adapting, progress is being made. The whole purpose of an internship is to try new things and get your hands dirty, and in that respect I’m doing just fine. I’m never going to forget those species that I accidentally collected, and I’m grateful for this opportunity to succeed and fail, alike.

Marc Bliss – California Plant Materials Center, Lockeford, CA

At the Lockeford Plant Material Center we have a unique situation; most interns at BLM field sites have areas to collect from right at their facilities, whereas the PMC is 100 acres of farmland used for propagating those initial native plant seeds. That said, it makes it slightly more difficult to collect seeds of target species, so we have to travel to other field sites in the surrounding areas.

These last couple weeks took me to both the Cougar Wetlands area of the Cosumnes River Preserve outside of Sacramento, and the Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern, just east of Yosemite. It’s astonishing to see how quickly climes change here in California, and likewise, how diverse the plant populations are. Cosumnes was chalk-full of grasses, sedges, and bulrushes all populating the flood plains and riparian areas. Red Hills, on the other hand, had large areas of serpentine deposits that limited the hillsides to stands of Ceanothus cuneatus, Pinus sabiniata, Elymus elymoides, and a few other smaller wildflowers like Castilleja.

I’ve only been in this state for about a month, but I’ve already travelled to the Bay Area, the Sierra Nevadas, and Monterey, and the more I see of California the more I understand why it’s such a biodiverse area and why it’s so important to have the BLM present here.

Castilleja associated wtih Buckbrush at Red Hills

Hello everyone, my name is Marc Bliss and I am the CLM intern at the Lockeford, California Plant Material Center. The PMC is owned by the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), a division of the USDA. At the PMC we grow native plants for the various BLM offices throughout the state for the purposes of habitat restoration, erosion control, rare plant propagation, invasive species control, etc. The majority of my work will be for the Seeds of Success (SOS) program, but I’ll also be helping in the fields and herbarium to propagate other plants.

This has been my first week at the facility, and it has been INCREDIBLY busy in Lockeford. On Tuesday and Wednesday we held an Irrigation  Training Workshop for many of the state NRCS engineers who assist local farmers with water efficiency and quality problems. They drove and flew in from all over to learn from the head state engineers how the various systems work and how the farmers use them. We covered our older gravity irrigation system (low pressure) that was used for flood irrigation and furrow irrigation, as well as our new (high pressure) system with a computer-monitored pump for sprinkler systems, small sprayers, and drip irrigation. It was the perfect introduction to my time here, learning how the farm operates and how many commercial farms manage their water resources to grow crops. The most interesting aspect of the PMC is that we’re not growing apricots, alfalfa, or avocados like other farms. Instead, we’re growing  native grasses like Sporobolous airoides, Nasella pulchra, and Hordeum jubatum. The “weeds” that we’re pulling are the flowers and bean  plants that most people are trying to keep! The seeds or seedlings will then be sent off to whomever requested them, perhaps to be planted  in riparian areas to hold down soils, or to recently burned areas to prevent fires in the future.

Purple Needlegrass (Nasella pulchra)

On my first day I repotted and consolidated 1000 small containers of Tahoe yellow cress (Rorippa subumbellata), which is endemic ONLY to the  shorelines of Lake Tahoe to be sent West to help increase population sizes there. It feels great to be part of something bigger than  myself and doing some real good in the world, all while learning valuable skills, whether it be native plant identification or the inner workings of commercial farms. Hopefully I’ll be venturing out soon to start seed collections!

Tahoe Yellow Cress (Rorippa subumbellata)