It has been an amazing summer of exploring the southwest here in Farmington, New Mexico. When I think back to all the field work and weekend adventures we had, it’s easy to see why time passed so quickly! For a while we thought there would be a never ending drought and the seeds would never come, oh how we were wrong. We found a gold mine down in Cuba and were able to make a total of 45 collections throughout the summer and check out some breathtaking country there too. Cuba, NM looks like it hasn’t changed much since the 50’s and that’s exactly the way the people there like it. The wildflowers and trees were lush and green all summer long and we would go whole days without seeing another soul on the back roads.
Last Thursday was one of my favorite days of the internship so far, it has been great to end everything on a high note. Deidre and I were able to help the riparian coordinator, Sarah Scott, and the threatened and endangered species biologist, John Kendal, asses the health of the San Juan River here in Farmington. All summer we had made plans to get out and paddle the river outside of work, but other adventures just kept getting in the way. Running the San Juan with Sarah and John was so much better because of the wealth of knowledge they brought along. John was identifying every bird we passed and Sarah was showing us where and how the river had changed since the last Proper Functioning Condition assessment. We had some moments of excitement on some mini rapids but everyone made it to the takeout dry and unscathed.

As the season comes to an end, I would like to thank my mentor, Sheila Williams, for all the knowledge and support she passed on to us throughout my time here. It has been great to learn the local flora here on the Colorado Plateau as well as the inner workings of our busy office. Hopefully the future holds more exciting and fun jobs like this one!

Time is flying here in Farmington, New Mexico mostly due to all the seed collections we have been making lately! The summer monsoon was just strong enough in the region south of Farmington to allow many of the forbs and grasses to seed out, which has created lots of field work for us.

One of my favorite collections was a globe mallow (Sphaeralcea), a common genus down here in the southwest desert. The plants in the patch we were collecting from looked very different from one another. This led us to believe that there were a number of different species growing in close proximity. Some had long narrow leaves, some had shorter fatter leaves and the flowers were ranging from bright orange to dark purple. This didn’t become apparent until we were in the middle of our collection process and we were thinking we would have to ship out a premade seed mix.

However, after much deliberation and advice from our mentor, Sheila Williams, we were able to figure out that it was Sphaeralcia emoryi, a species with alot of natural variation.

Sphaeralcea emoryi

Hopefully the frost holds off long enough for a few more collections!

I can’t believe it has almost been two months since I arrived in Farmington, we have been so busy looking for seeds, keying out plants, and learning the flora of this area time is flying. Upon our return from the Chicago Botanic Garden we were greeted with the beginning of the summer monsoon. It is impressive how fast the plants have responded to moisture this past month. The perennial bunch grasses are re-sprouting and the once crispy looking forbs are starting to flower up! Hopefully this is the start of a new precipitation trend because with a couple more weeks of wet weather we should have lots seeds ripe for collection.

With few seeds to collect we have been focusing on learning the local flora, last weekend was spent at a tree and shrub workshop discovering the wide verity of local woody plants in San Juan County. One of the teachers, Arnold Clifford, is an avid geologist, botanist, and ethno botanist working on the Navajo Reservation and surrounding four corners region. It was exciting to not only learn new plants but also the Navajo uses for the plants as well as the geologic formations each plant prefers. Our other teachers Ken Hyle and Bob Savinski had a wealth of knowledge on the woody plants of the Farmington area and led us all over the county so we could look at the dominant plants of many ecosystems.

We have also been able to branch out of the botanical world a bit. Last night we went out to mist net bats and trap rodents with the threaded and endangered species biologist. Though the catch wasn’t too bountiful, we only caught one bat, one moth, and a bird, it was interesting to learn about bat ecology and netting. Bat echolocation is amazing as far as predator prey dynamics are involved. Bat sound wave frequencies very widely from species to species mostly because of the specific hearing ranges of the moths and bugs the bats are feeding on. So a bat that likes to eat moths will hunt at a frequency below what the moths can hear, take that Christian Bale!

Deidre on the hunt for some seeds

Our only bat, Myotis spp.

The Sphynx moth we caught was larger than the bat.

Just finishing up may second week in Farmington, New Mexico and we are really getting into the swing of things here. Coming from a plant physiology background these first weeks have been a humbling and fulfilling experiencing of  botanizing, plant keying and navigating around the desert. Relearning families, remembering plant morphology, learning how to use GIS and GPS units has been really exciting! Everyone always told me that the real learning starts after you finish with college and if these few weeks are indicative of the next five months I have no doubts.

Today we were able to check out a new program that our office has implemented as a control for Russian Knapweed,  Acroptilon repens , an invasive herb in our region. This biological control involves a mite that infects the inflorescences of the knapweed and instead of them producing flowers they make galls for the mite larva to live in. This will hopefully slow down the reproduction of the knapweed and prevent it from spreading further! In the second year of implementation the mites seem to be spreading well and soon the project could be implemented on a larger scale.

Looking for mite infected plants.

Got one!