The past two weeks we have been imaging all 3,300 vouchers in the Medford BLM’s herbarium as part of a project funded by the University of Washington. This project’s ultimate goal is to digitize herbaria throughout the Pacific Northwest and get these resources into the public eye. We spent many repetitive hours placing vouchers (some dating all the way back to the 1920’s) into a photo light box and sinking up voucher accession number to the online database.

Even though the work we did was for a greater good, I am glad to say we are finally back out in the field and it is amazing how quickly things can change in such a sort time.  It looks like we will be starting to collect seed from many species starting next week and the second round of flowers that weren’t in bloom a month ago are now showing their faces.

a molting cicada

voucher in the light box

Calochortus tolmiei (pussy ears)

I am coming to the end of my second week here in the Medford District BLM office. So far it has been a crash course in general botany as we get geared up for what looks like is going to be a busy seed collecting season.  The Medford District office is the largest BLM office in the United States, which means we have quite a large region to collect from.  Not only are we dealing with a grand scale of space, but the Southern Oregon landscape is all over the place when it comes to ecosystem diverseness. The species richness and biodiversity appears to me, at this point in the season, to be endless.  The Siskiyou Mountains, Klamath Mountains, Lower Cascade Mountains, and  the Rogue Valley are notoriously known for their unique soils which equate to many rare and endemic plant species.  This creates an exciting challenge when it comes to plant identification.

So far in this short week and a half, I have gone on about 5 scouting missions in the surrounding areas, collecting plants, practicing my identification skills, and bring specimens back to the lab for further examination.  We have been taking notes about when we assume these plants will start to go to seed and plan on going back and checking these locations, as well as scouting out new ones, in the weeks to come.

Having moved to this region about six months ago, this internship opportunity as allowed me to really get a better feel for my new home in a geographical sense.  Being able to begin to identify local plants, creeks, mountains, and other land marks, that were nameless strangers to me 2 weeks ago, has granted me a sense of community in a very odd naturalist sort of way. The ability to put a name to a face (or in this case a flower) has allowed me to feel more comfortable in my new surroundings.

Happy (seed) hunting!

-Mason

Medford, Oregon BLM

Identifying Mimulus guttatus.

View from the top of Lower Table Rock (facing south)

Making a pressing of Lupinus bicolor.