Author Archives: Eliza Seigel

Hispida? More like Crisp-ida

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It is HOT, it is SMOKY, it is NOT a delicious barbecue chicken sandwich, but it IS the weather of Montana in July! We are reaching the end of our survey season, because the heat is drying up the plants to the point of being unidentifiable (hence the title – our Castilleja is crunchy now).

Can you find the senesced Allium parvum?

It’s been amazing seeing an almost full life cycle for several of our species already during the season. Plants that weren’t anywhere near bloom when we arrived have now gone to seed. I feel quite lucky to be here long enough to see the forest change over time, and if fall is anything like our bosses/botanists Lea and Laura are hyping it up to be, I haven’t see the half of it yet. But that comes later; right now is fire season! This is important for the vegetation since many plants are pyrophytic (adapted to fire), such as lodgepole pine, whose seeds won’t germinate until the layer of resin coating them has been burned off. People tend to view fire as a destructive force – and it can be – but it often also creates, makes room for new and wonderful things to grow in its wake. In Hamilton, the smoke from the wildfires has caused a fair amount of haze, but has also given way to some pretty spectacular sunrises and sunsets.

View from the bunkhouse

As for the Botshots, we surveyed for pollinators with the Montana Bumble Bee Atlas! I highly suggest clicking the link because they have some neat citizen science opportunities that anybody can participate in. We trudged out into fields of beebalm and fireweed, prepared with bug-catching, bee-snatching goals. Sometimes of these arthropods are escape artists, trying to wriggle out of the bug nets and vials, but with the help of some folks from the Wildlife Department in Stevensville, Hannah and I still managed to catch 12 bees in one survey! There is a lack of data on pollinator populations, especially in the American West, so helping out in areas that had never been officially surveyed before felt really rewarding.

From left to right: Li, me, Laura, Cicely, and Hannah

That’s mostly been July! I’m excited to move into monitoring and seed collection. This month has shown me so clearly how bees depend on plants which depend on seeds which depend on fire and, right now, depend on us for their collection and future propagation. It is a good reminder of the web we live in. And, speaking of the interconnection of all things…

Little explosions across the valley 🙂

Warmly (no really, it’s 97 degrees out),

E

What’s in a name? Turns out, Shakespeare, quite a lot

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Starting a new job means learning a lot of new names, and not just my coworkers’.

“Do you know who this is?” William asked, staring at a stem of grass in each hand.

I looked at Cicely, my fellow CLM intern, and then back at William. We were at a loss, and honesty is the best policy. “Um, no.”

He broke into a huge grin, shoving the plants into our hands. “It’s Timothy! In the boot!”

We quickly learned that our newest friend was Timothy grass, aka Phleum pratense, and “in the boot” is botany slang for when the panicle is still developing in the leaf sheath (read: the fluffy part of the grass hasn’t popped out yet). Cicely and I have only been working for about two weeks now, and our time has been mostly split between threatened species surveys and trainings. Lots of matching the face to the name, morphology to binomial nomenclature.

At this all-day grass workshop that William was leading, we spent most of the day going through dichotomous keys and practicing identification skills. There is nothing like sitting on the forest floor and measuring awn length through a loupe. Truly nothing like it.

Our group with botanist William Schlegel in Lolo National Forest

Our training also included “Deb Day” where Deborah Goslin, a retired botany technician and wellspring of knowledge, drove us around various sites and showed us many of the species our Forest Service site monitors. Deb really instilled in us a ‘stop and smell the ponderosas’ attitude. I am developing a reverence for the ecology of this forest: green on verdant green, strong-standing Douglas firs protecting the nodding onion in the understory below, how the tubular scarlet gilia is shaped so perfectly for the Rufous hummingbird’s beak. In the most literal sense of the term, it is awesome.

From left to right: me, Cicely, Li, and Deb at the top of Painted Rocks
“Baby’s first federally listed sensitive species!”: Castilleja covilleana

I feel like I’m learning so much every day that my brain is going to expand into my skull Megamind-style. Something that botany is teaching me is how names hold so much meaning. Take, for example, Lewisia rediviva (pictured below). Genus Lewisia is named for Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, who ate this root on his journey and collected specimens for Western botanists. The term rediviva comes from its ability to ‘revive’ from roots that could seem dead or dry – a useful skill in hot, rocky environments and intermontane grasslands. However, long before it had a Latin name, it went by several Indigenous names, including the Salish spÌ“eƛ̓mÌ“ (spetlum) which means ‘bitter’. French trappers and traders also noted the bitter taste and called it racine amère, which translates directly in English to bitterroot!

From just a few words you can see the plant’s life cycle and its history with humanity. Isn’t that incredible? I saw my first bitterroot in bloom while on a hike in Missoula, before even entering the eponymous valley. It’s hard to name the feeling I had, seeing the plant that is so integral and defining to this place. Gratitude, responsibility, and joy are all true, but don’t seem to cover the depth of it. Regardless, those pink petals were the warmest welcome anyone could ask for. I’m so excited for the rest of the season in Bitterroot National Forest.

The famous root!

Until next time,

E