“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
― John Muir

As my internship wraps up I want to give gratitude to Central Oregon in terms of its landscape and its people. Both personally and professionally I feel like I have taken as much advantage of Central Oregon as I possibly could. No evening was wasted and no time was spent wondering what was next on my plate. And what is next on my plate can only be described in one word: epic. I’ll be backpacking the 211 mile long John Muir Trail, which will give me some focus on what I should take on next in my life. I’m interested in the intersection of teaching and science, but there are so many places to wrestle with this nexus that the trail will hopefully give me some direction in which to go.

Focusing on the past, I’d like to highlight some parts of this internship that expanded who I am today. Though I’ve had previous botany jobs, there was always a mentor who knew all the species so my keying skills were not as sharp. My mentor Kristin is new to this area so I spent hours under a microscope looking at the fascinating features of taxonomy. Due to its minute flowers and complex Asteraceae terminology, my proudest moment was keying to species a Solidago canadensis. As part of keying to species, I learned how a herbarium is a valuable resource in verifying my ID skills and I feel much more confident in explaining the importance of them.

Enjoying and protecting nature’s beauty was a large part of this internship for me. From Forest Hills Natural Resource Area, to vast sagebrush ‘oceans’, to the paleontological wonders of the John Day region, there is a large amount of stunning landscape at the Prineville Field Office. I am blessed to have been part of the Seeds of Success program and the weeds infestation program in the Forest Hills NRA because this year a large portion of it was burned. Our data on both the biodiversity and the noxious weed populations allowed this fire to receive extra funding for restoration. The restoration of this gorgeous wilderness area would not have been possible without CLM interns on the ground.

Another project I worked on was organizing the monitoring of a rare plant in the mustard family called Thelypodium eucosmum. It lives on steep, rocky slopes and its monitoring program is governed by multiple agencies with different databases. These two challenges pushed me both physically and mentally which resulted in visiting species that had not been seen for decades. Hopefully the more organized paperwork will enable ranchers and land managers to have a better understanding of this species needs.

Overall I’d like to thank my mentor Kristin Williams, my co-worker Tiffany Druba, the CLM/CBG program manager Krissa Skogen, the staff and the guest speakers that put on the week-long conference in Chicago, and Megan Haidet who coordinates the Seeds of Success program in DC. It’s phenomenal how much coordination is put into this program and I am very proud to be part of it.

Best of success,
Debbie Pattison
Prineville, OR Field Office

Thelypodium eucosmum

TeatersForestHillNRA

Lichen it!

“The Island”

Chicago Botanic Garden Bonsai exhibit

Criterion

Herbarium verification

ATV training

Forest Hills Natural Resource Area

You can smell that summer is officially here in Central Oregon due to the smoke in the air. A blitzkrieg of dry lightning enveloped the area last week and more is expected in the upcoming week. On the bright side, I find the fires really bring home the point of how important the Seeds of Success program is. For many of the seeds collected restore these scorched areas throughout the West. As of now our Seeds of Success collections sites are yet to be affected by fire and hopefully that will continue to be the case.
As summer continues we are traveling to higher altitudes to continue to collect forb species. Today we went to check on Crepis acuminata but unfortunately 80% of the seed was attacked by some sort of pathogen so the entire collection had to be cancelled. Nonetheless it was still a productive day for on the way back down we pulled up the noxious spotted knapweed.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I am monitoring the rare plant Thelypodium eucosmum which has overall been successful, adventurous, and personally meaningful. Hiking through narrow canyons to study disturbance, ecology, and population dynamics of this plant involves a strong physique and detailed notes to assess the site. Many sites had not been seen for decades and at times have had surprising results. For example, one site that had not been visited since the 1980’s only had 20 plants but nowadays has over 300 plants! Another site unfortunately only had four individuals this year. This field work will hopefully bring to light which areas need to be fenced off from cows and perhaps lead to other conclusions such as juniper removal. Overall I hope the species will continue to be around in the following decades due to my field work.

Thelypodium eucosmum surrounded by its associated species: Great Basin Wild Rye.

Monitoring a Thelypodium eucosmum site

Eriophyllum lanatum with pollinators

Eriophyllum latanum seed

Debbie Pattison
Prineville, Oregon BLM Field Office

Summer is ending but with our the northwest rain forbs for Seeds of Success collections are still in bloom. In reality this is good for us since all botany staff were at conferences or training last week and unable to collect!

The conference I attended is one that most first year CLM interns attend. It’s hosted by the Chicago Botanical Garden and is a wonderful crash course in monitoring populations, learning about Seeds of Success, and receiving an overview in the BLM and the CLM program. One treat is that Dean Tonneda, a botanist at the Carson City BLM, shares his collection of Mono Lake tribal ethnobotany. After this lecture I was left with the idea that though many of our cultures have lost the knowledge of wild plants, that knowledge can be gained once again by going out into the forest and playing around with plant properties. For example, finding fiber properties is as easy as walking in the forest and tugging on plants. Ethnobotany is not extinct, it is just dormant.

Chicago Botanic Garden

One exciting project I am working on is with a rare plant called Thelypodium eucosmum. First I organized past monitoring data on the species and was alarmed by the rate at which the species is going extinct. No need for chi square graphs or R programming; simple math easily shows the progression of this species. For example, there were 2,000 individuals in 1980 and now there are 200. Then I chose the most sensitive populations to monitor and made an ArcGIS map. This week or the next we will be climbing the steep ravines near the John Day Fossil beds where these populations exist. Hopefully our work will provide the data to create range land contracts that help protect this species while giving ranchers the wide open space they need for their cows.

Thelypodium eucosmum

Debbie Pattison
Prineville Field Office, BLM

After a month and a half of being here in Central Oregon I feel more settled but still excited about the challenge to cover a large land area to find suitable plant populations for seed collection.

Our Lomatium species are going to be ready to collect after some steady temperature in the seventies for a couple of weeks. The plants’ phenology were slowed down by wind, rain, and cold weather but not our cheery & fun crew spirit. Most of our collections are in beautiful rocky areas near pine trees nestled in the bottom of watersheds. Even so, work in Eastern Oregon is not all a field of daisies. A population of buttercup (Ranunculus glabberimmus) was heavily foraged, so we can’t sustainably collect from that site. I hope we’ll be able to find another population before they are crinkly brown and almost invisible.
Other projects I’ve been working on are making sure our sensitive Calochortus species has fencing around it so that cows cannot graze. It’s a good challenge in using ArcMap and GPS that will be handy for future projects, including Seeds of Success. We’ve also been working with other seasonals on monitoring sage grouse habitat. Unfortunately a lot of sites do not seem suitable for sage grouse, but the mood keeps positive as we work on mimicking the calls they give.

Last week we went out in the field with a wildlife biologist to see his vision for playa restoration. Many playas have been dug out to create watering holes, which have been trampled by cattle. The future vision is to put in wells and to even out the soil in the watering holes. Hopefully we’ll get to seed collect this summer for some of these sites. The least impacted playas have a good diversity of forbs and grasses that would be wonderful to collect from.

Overall I couldn’t have asked for a better place to work and a better focus in botanical work.

Allium, Onion Flower

Balsamorhiza sagittata

View from Forest Hill

Best,
Debbie
BLM Prineville

Rain passing over us in a heavy cistern

Cardinal direction eastern

Yellow is the color of the young

Agoseris. Lomatium.

Digging them up like a Piaute or a Wasco

Roots clenched. Basalt flow.

Before I know it you’ll become crinkled ribbons

A brown remembrance given

And sent away into a manila envelope

Epithets. Scientific trope.

A memory

A reverberated chord of Big Sky Bend.

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