October is over, and so is the end of our field season. Li, our Montana Conservation Corps Fellow, left us at the beginning of the month (and on Employee Appreciation Day too?!), and it was sad to say goodbye. She really made the bunkhouse feel like a bunkhome. But the show must go on – we had botanizing to do. Since we’ve finished monitoring and our target species have dispersed their seed, most of our time has been spent establishing pollinator islands.

The area we planted in, Schultz Saddle, burned in the 2022 Trail Ridge wildfire, which made it a good candidate for an area we could put in native plugs as a food source for bees. We spent several days swinging hoedads and recording the locations of our plantings so the crew can monitor the site next year. Schultz Saddle is pretty high in elevation, and it snowed up there for most of the past two weeks (which made me very happy).

This month, Cicely and I got to do more cross-training. First, we went out with Hydrology to monitor the chemical composition of the Bitterroot River, specifically looking for the stream flow and concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorous. Later, we helped Soils complete some surveys, aka hiking all day taking samples. I looooove getting my hands in the dirt, so it was pretty awesome. Amanda taught me about how forests store carbon and how soil heals from disturbances over time. It was really interesting because vegetation actually plays a big role in soil healing by breaking up compaction through their roots and cycling in different nutrients!

In my free time, I’ve been trying to fit as much life into my last month here as possible: going to Hamilton’s Apple Day, visiting a friend, participating in the town’s Witch’s Ride, and playing night frisbee with light up vests. I don’t want to take a second for granted; this really is a wonderful place with wonderful people.

Also, Cicely and I hiked Trapper Peak.

It felt like a perfect wrap-up to our season because we have stared at this mountain from a distance for five whole months now. We could see it from basically everywhere we surveyed in the forest, standing watchful over us. At 10,157 feet, it is the tallest peak in the Bitterroots.

The ascent was absolutely gorgeous, and I was elated to see a mature whitebark pine stand on the way! Hiking was steep, tiring, and so much fun. Cicely and I agree that rock scrambling is one of our favorite activities. I felt a huge sense of achievement reaching the top and seeing Darby from a new perspective, looking down at the valley thinking, “Wow, it all seems so different from up here…”

… which is kind of how I feel at the end of this internship. From the smallest details (identifying a species as part of Asteraceae by its bracts) to the big picture (the impact of climate change on plant migration and seed sourcing), I’ve learned so much from this experience. Plus, surveying, monitoring, and seed collecting – all of it is part of a larger effort to keep plant biodiversity in US forests. So I’m proud of the work we’ve done.

Things I’ll miss:

• Scouting in our rigs Rusty (RIP) and Betty White
• The peacefulness of picking seeds with pappus
• Li always pointing out the moon
• Pestering Laura with wetland fun facts
• The mountains
• Pasta dinners in the bunkhouse
• The crew replacing ‘Cecelia’ with ‘Phacelia‘ when we sing the Simon & Garfunkel song

I’ll be sad to leave, but as I prepare to trade in my Lesica for Flora of Virginia, all I’m feeling is grateful. Laura, Lea, Hannah, and Li made the Botshots such a great crew. Cicely was the best co-intern anyone could ask for. I’m taking these memories and lessons with me. Thank you, Bitterroots, it’s been real.

Signing off,

E

I JUST WANT TO TALK ABOUT PINES, so here’s a super speedy recap of the month:

• It’s officially fall! Fire season is mostly over and the leaves are changing colors.
• Went to the Tetons and Yellowstone with Cicely and Li
• Cross-trained with Soils and saw some cool mycorrhizae
• Collected a monster haul of fuzzy rabbitbrush seeds
• Got stopped on the road by a herd of bighorn sheep

Now onto the tree that has taken up the majority of space in my mind for the past several weeks. Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) is an endangered species that is threatened by mountain pine beetle outbreaks and… dun dun dun… white pine blister rust (WPBR), which is a type of fungus that kills white pines.

In college I read about whitebark pine and other “high-five” species – five-needled trees that love cold, high elevation habitats, which means they’re also really vulnerable to climate heating. So being able to actually go out in the field and make sure that these populations were protected was beyond awesome.

Surveying these trees meant trekking up steep slopes to take different measurements of any whitebark we found and checking for signs of blister rust. By the end of the day, we had our own language for shouting out our data to Elijah, who was recording. You could hear us yelling, “BABY! BABY! BABY NO DEEBAGE!” all throughout the forest. (‘Baby’ was a pine less than three feet tall, and ‘deebage’ was short for ‘DBH’, which is short for ‘diameter at breast height’.) By the end of the day, we even found two mature trees!

All this surveying came full circle when we visited the Coeur D’Alene Forest Nursery. Nathan, the manager of the Seed Transfer Zone project, gave us a tour and explained to us how their scientists are breeding whitebark pines that have a natural genetic resistance to WPBR.

The nursery itself felt almost magical to me. There were massive, sprawling ‘grow-out’ fields and plant beds filled to the brim with native plugs. I loved it, and it reminded me of my old happy place – my college’s greenhouse.

Our main goal was to drop off the seed collections we’ve been gathering this entire season, but we also got to stay a few days to help out with the projects there. We were assigned to measure Penstemon procerus in the fields, taking basal growth height and width, inflorescence height, and leaf height and width. There was a lot to measure for each individual plant, but we were up for the challenge!

The data we were gathering will be used to decide which Seed Transfer Zone (STZ) each of seeds will go. USGS sums up STZs the best: “Seed transfer zones are areas where plant materials can be transferred with little risk of being poorly adapted to their new location.” So, our morphology measurements are being used to determine what geographic area each plant would thrive in so that they can be grown out in bulk for seed and be as effective as possible in the restoration mixes.

The work got a little monotonous after a few hours, and Li and I got a good case of the giggles, laughing at each other’s attempts at trying to sing early 2000’s dad rock. Even if we were getting a little loopy, it’s neat to have worked on almost every step of the seed mix process.

Between the pines and the penstemon, going to Coeur D’Alene reminded me how the importance of what we’re doing can sometimes get lost in the every day. I’m grateful that the nursery made sure we aren’t missing the forest for the trees. Pun intended.

– E

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).

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.

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.

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…

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

E