My dad quoted a saying to me once that hindsight is 20/20.  Now that my internship has come to an end, I can take a step back and look at my 10 months of work with the Forest Service RMRS lab from a different perspective.  I’m back home in TX almost a year later and with new experiences and new adventures to share with my family.  I look now to the oak tree that’s been growing in the front lawn and it looks the same but a little taller and wider.  I look at my parents and my sister and they look the same, but just a little bit older.  I wonder if they think the same when they look at me.  After all is said and done, I am REALLY glad I went.  I was apprehensive to be away from home for such a long time but now I’m really glad I did.  Whether my family can see it in me or not, I feel like I grew confidence as a person and as a biologist.  Being out of my comfort zone (a brand new environment and new job) really forced me to be come out of my shell, I think.  For the longest time during the internship I was quiet and didn’t really say much, but now looking back I feel like I was able to open up a little more towards the end of my stay.  And during work, whether I was doing a good job or not, I always felt like I could have done better.  I always felt like I was always messing up and constantly doubting my abilities.  Looking back now, I think I did the best I could give and that I was probably being too hard on myself.  I think now when I go to my next job or adventure I will be able to feel like I know that I am doing a good job and not stress so much about it.  I think for that, I am grateful for the internship experience.  I think the internship gave me a place to stumble and grow as a biologist and now I will be able to go into my next job with ease and confidence.  Another reason why I am grateful for the internship is that with the help of my boss, I was able to speak to her and her colleagues about graduate school and other opportunities to consider.  I have been considering grad school but was scared of the idea of all it would entail.  I was able to express my concerns about school and they helped me to see that it is not as scary as I was making it out to be.  I now have a few more people, my mentor included, to turn to for advice or for suggestions in my professional career, people I wouldn’t have known or have met if it weren’t for the internship.  I’d like to say thanks from the bottom of my heart to Krissa and Marian for the internship opportunity.  I would definitely do it all again and do recommend other recent graduates to consider an opportunity through the Conservation and Land Management Internship Program.

Merry Marshall
Boise, ID
FS

The touch of the summery sun that used to fill me with heat has cooled with the passing days to a merely luke-warmth, the green leaves on the trees have turned bright reds, yellows, and oranges and have since fallen to the ground, and to be covered by snow!  I have enjoyed what the Idahoan winter has had to offer me. I have gone snowboarding and sledding as well as enjoyed the snow showers and inspections of the intricate designs of tiny snowflakes (awe-some!).  As I was removing the snow off the windows of my car one morning before work I realized, “I am definitely living in the thick of snow…how cool!”  I had a more profound realization one evening after work when I was stuck in the snow in the parking lot!  Eventually I was freed, but not without assistance (apparently you’re supposed to kick the snow out and not into the back of the tires. Whoops!).  What a learning experience!  Now if I could only get over my fear of driving in ice!

I have been doing more than enjoying the snow and fearing the ice of course. I have been shipping the seed that we have collected to Bend Seed Extractory and taking close up pictures of the seed before I do, as well as entering information from data forms for the 2010 collecting season into a database (BG Base). It’s a really dry database and not very user friendly (so it seems) until you get familiar with it. I have been able to decrease the time of entering each data form into the database with each passing day and can now mail merge like a pro! There were definitely times when I felt like I was dealing with a bottomless pile of data forms and data entry. However, I felt better about the situation when a friend suggested that I try to break down the pile of forms into smaller chunks. So, I stayed positive and broke down the pile and completed smaller sections instead of trying to do all of them at once. With the help of the suggestion and my changed perspective I realized I learned yet another tool for the toolbox that I’m sure will be useful in the future when the going ever gets tough again.

Although I’m done working in the field, the data sheet required one more task of me: to get my hands dirty and play with soil! I had to classify the soils for the sites we collected by feel of texture (from sand, silt, clay, loam, or anywhere in between) of moistened soil and by color using a Munsell color chart (to standardize what everyone calls a color). I had great help from the awesome soil scientists at the USDA/NRCS Service Center soil lab in Meridian, ID. With their help I was increasing my accuracy in in identifying texture by feel of soils. I had to ball up about 100 soil samples, so I started to get the feel for it by the end! It was fun, and according to my new soil scientist friends, I was picking up on it really fast (so perhaps there is a niche for me there..hmmm).

The year is wrapping up and the 2010 collection information has to be sent in with a ribbon on top (the annual report). After that, I believe I am at the mercy of my mentor and his boss and what they need help with around the RMRS lab. Should be interesting.

Merry Marshall
Boise, ID
FS

The touch of the summery sun that used to fill me with heat has cooled with the passing days to a merely luke-warmth, the green leaves on the trees have turned bright reds, yellows, and oranges and have since fallen to the ground, to be been covered by snow! I have enjoyed what the Idahoan winter has had to offer me. I have gone snowboarding and sledding as well as enjoyed the snow showers and inspections of the intricate designs of tiny snowflakes (awe-some!). As I was removing the snow off the windows of my car one morning before work I realized, “I am definitely living in the thick of snow…how cool!” I had a more profound realization one evening after work when I was stuck in the snow in the parking lot! Eventually I was freed, but not without assistance (apparently you’re supposed to kick the snow out and not into the back of the tires. Whoops!). What a learning experience! Now if I could only get over my fear of driving in ice!

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So the 2010 seed collecting season at the Rocky Mountain Research Station is just about over with the exception of the few collections that are made in the fall, so this a good time to reflect on the summer and seed collecting season thus far. Seed collecting (for me) entailed lots of mental energy to think like a plant in order to hunt them down and… (jk). It definitely took some physical energy traipsing around the desert looking for the target plant. By the time the plants are producing seed they are usually no longer green and luscious, instead they are golden yellow, very dry and crisp. The majority of the plants look the same way so its harder to spot the target plant. There are some plants that seed indeterminately which means that the entire plant doesn’t seed all at once and there isn’t a specific period of time that the plant sets seed. Some of collections that I helped collect this summer like Lomatium triternatum (LOTR-nine leaf biscuit root) were hard to spot! Sidenote: one common thing to shorten the scientific names of species is to use the first two letters of the genus and the first two letters of the species. So, LOTR, can have leaves as long as 12 inches but when they dry up, the only plant structures visible are the seed attached to a stem. They are covered by taller plants and shrubs got discouraged when I collected from 10 LOTR plants and my mentor from 75! He definitely has the eye for spotting plants, even while driving on the highway! One of the collection sites for Achnatherum thurberianum (ACTH-Thurber’s needle grass) yielded lots of seed and the plants were as close as two feet apart for miles down the road! When a site is as fruitful as that one was, you can just get in a zone and collect your little heart out! The technique to collecting Thurber’s needle grass was pretty easy. I just ran my fingers through the tops of the grass heads and placed whatever seed came off into a bag. The ACTH seed was semi-pokey-hence needle grass! Eriogonum umbellatum (ERUM- sulphur-flower buckwheat) just near Horseshoe Bend, ID ( ̴1 hour north of Boise) was one of the largest areas growing a plant in such a centralized area. I didn’t have to look too hard or far to find the next plant I’d be collecting seed from. We literally had to walk the miles for the ACTH collection, but this site was more of a climb! Some sites this summer entailed walking through fields for miles and miles hoping to stumble on a plant (with seed).

As there was diversity in plant size, the seed were no different. This is very close up picture of the seed that it is quite small. Some seeds like Artemisia tridentata (ARTR-big sagebrush) are even smaller and lighter than this so you can’t breathe too hard when working with them! I have enjoyed seeing the diversity of plants in the shrubland desert and the higher elevation of pine forest. A lot of time was spent driving to the seed collection sites so I had lot of time to enjoy the scenic drives, listen to good music on our satellite radio and chat with my coworkers. It was nice sharing the enthusiasm of the great outdoors with my coworkers.
I felt really fortunate to get to see different parts of southern Idaho while on the clock. I was able to collect Penstemon acuminatus (sharpleaf penstemmon) while seeing Bruneau Dunes where one of my coworkers ok-ed my running up one of the smaller dunes to see how hard it is to run up sand, and up Bogus Basin where I could look down on the city of Boise on the drive to collect Achillea millefolium (ACMI-common yarrow). The outdoors have just been beautiful here in Idaho and I have enjoyed exploring this summer.
I’m sad that summer is leaving but with all of the collections and field data sheets come lots of time spent in the office working on shipping the seeds off for cleaning or research, and entering information into a database called BG Base. That is what I have to look forward to this winter. I was fortunate to have a ten month position so my story in Boise, ID doesn’t end yet.
Stay tuned,

Merry Marshall
Boise, ID
FS

I have been a Seeds of Success intern with the Forest Service for about two months now. I was curious to see what kind of adventure I would have here in Boise (I’m from Texas and I’ve definitely never been this far northwest- I was a Chicago Botanic intern last summer which is how I heard about this internship). I have been able to see and play in snow already! I honestly wasn’t expecting that to happen till next winter! It was definitely fun learning how to make a snowman (didn’t realize there was a technique to it).

As far as work goes, I have been fortunate enough to be able to do different tasks so the weeks have just flown by. I spent many hours on the computer searching different herbaria to find where plants grow in our area for possible seed collections. Meanwhile there have been gaps in between where I went out with the rest of the Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS) crew to weed plots or collect data of plants they have been growing and observing in different locations around Boise. It’s nice to get out of the office once in a while. I and the rest of the crew collected some data at a 100 acre site we had in Utah in conjunction with the Joint Fire Science Program to observe restoration practice and establishment of seeding after fire. I was there for 7 days identifying what was growing at points along a tape so at every meter I had to identify what was growing at that point. I was nervous because I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to recognize what I was looking at. I had gone through pictures and read descriptions several times before the trip but still wasn’t sure how well that would help me. I worked with a partner who called out while I recorded on the first day before letting me try the following day.

It helped me to become comfortable and familiar with what I was looking at. I have to say that I did pretty darn well! I was kind of impressed with how fast I caught on to the species I saw and became confident that what I was calling out was correct!

My boss (not to get mixed up with my mentor) said that when you first start learning species of plants you start off with a blank page but once you start learning more and more plants it becomes easier to fill the page and identify more and more plants in the field. I guess every new habitat is a brand new page! I have worked with habitats in Texas, Illinois, and now Idaho! That’s exciting yet overwhelming at the same time! I guess I will be three pages in after this experience! I’m sure the more the better and more diverse my knowledge with plants will be!

Like I said earlier, I am an SOS intern but we haven’t begun seed collecting because plants are just now starting to bloom. I’ve heard from several people that because of the cool summer we are having, plants are barely starting to bloom. In the next few days my mentor, I and the rest of our crew will be scouting for big populations for seed collecting. I recently went to the SOS training in Vale, OR so I’m looking forward to following out the entire seed collecting process from beginning to end. I’ll let you know how that turns out!

Merry Marshall
Boise, ID
FS