July introduced me to depths of our forest more beautiful than I could have imagined. At the beginning of the month, my co-intern, Emma, and I embarked on an exclusively seed-collecting trip around Huntington Lake. Before we left, we went to the library to do some research. Using many different sources, we scoped out some of the plants that we have been keen to collect this season, compiling information regarding their identifications, confirmed and probable growing locations, and phenology. Based on our research, we knew that we would utilize this trip to preliminarily assess populations, getting vouchers and initial estimates of population sizes to inform potential future trips for collections and for our records. Our priority populations included Mountain coyote mint, (Monardella odartissima var lechtinii), Western wallflower (Erysimum capitatum), Stickseed (Hackelia mundula), Anderson’s thistle (Cirsium andersonii). We also kept an eye out for some rare plants we knew were in the area (just for fun!) including Hulsea brevifolia, an aster that is abundant around Huntington Lake.

The next week was a departure from our normal activities: chainsaw training. We underwent this training in order to be better prepared to evacuate an area under immediate threat of wildfires. This same week, we were informed of the urgent need to survey an area for Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) in the John Muir Wilderness in our forest. This is a threatened species under the endangered species act is a white pine, containing needle bunches of five, that grows at subalpine and timberline elevations. We were enlisted to help, so we worked a great deal to get some last-minute trip planning done.

We began this following week on Sunday, packing and collecting the materials we needed–cleaning bear canisters, stocking up on batteries/chargers, readying tablets and radios, prepping the field press. We drove over Kaiser Pass to Florence Lake where we camped before taking the ferry across the lake in the morning to begin our trek. We stayed this first night in the backcountry at the Muir Trail Ranch, then completed our hike to the study area the next morning. We surveyed that day and much of the next prior to our hike out. We found a much larger population than anticipated, but we were bummed to see that most of the individuals had been infected with the blister rust, which poses a mortal threat to white pines.

Although we were overjoyed to help out on this survey for this endangered species, Emma and I were, of course, relentlessly occupied with seed collection. We had little time for it, but we still jotted down some population locations and estimated specifications, as well as collected some vouchers in hopes that we will be able to return and collect seeds from those plants. Here, we noted a population of Anderson’s thistle even stronger than that we had seen at Huntington Lake, and got excited about a native Elymus species (yet to be indubitably verified)!

Something that has become beautifully apparent and that I consider rather beautiful about my time working this field job is the intimacy of learning the plants and the opportunity to get to know them on a deeper level. Previously, I would memorize morphological characteristics and ecological for classes or for jobs—often without actually seeing them in real life—and would not form any sort of personal connection with them. Now, I can touch the plants, hold their seeds in my hands, smell them (big shoutout to Jefferey Pine!), better understand their ecological niches… and better understand them overall!

Until next month… hugs from SNF! XOXO

Elanor

In the last two months, I have thought about phenology and life cycles of plants more than I ever have.
 
Thinking about this has encouraged me to ponder my own life. For the past two decades, I have strictly adhered to a seemingly endless cycle: school, a break from school, back to school, back to a break, back to school… In this process, I faced challenges and I grew, but I remained entrapped in the rhythm. Then, at long last, the cycle was broken on May 18th of this year when I graduated from Louisiana State University.
 
From days in lecture halls and final exams to endless hours in the foothills and on the peaks of grand mountains, from suffocating humidity to bone dry heat, and from living in a metropolitan area to one with a population of just about 3,000—I had stepped into a whole new world.
 
Each day that I go to the field, especially in the burn scars that are too abundant around me, I see this reflected in the surrounding plant communities. Environmental events, such as fires, strip much of an area, leaving surviving rhizomes, seeds, and plants in a completely unfamiliar place. Still, many plants persist and reemerge, effectively encouraging the propagation of the traits most suited to survival.
 
One plant, in particular, comes to mind. This is Carpentaria californica, a shrub endemic to a select few sites in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada—all in the Sierra National Forest. It thrives in the aftermath of fire, primarily reproducing from stump sprouts after burning. The plant can grow each year, abiding by these cycles, but a radical environmental change is necessary for its significant growth. I can empathize with C. californica as I navigate a completely novel environment.

 
The beginning of my season here marked my first time in the Sierra Nevada, my first time working in a National Forest, and my first time working a real field botany job. I was forced to become familiar with the flora of the Sierra quickly, and I just as rapidly fell in love with it.

That which I have learned about seeds and seed collecting is especially important to me. Seed collecting has proven to be incredibly rewarding; I am overjoyed that my work will one day contribute to the revegetation of this place that I have come to adore. Each day, I work with unbelievable views of the Sierra Nevada, familiarizing myself with a new population of plants that plays the most vital part in this process. Each of these populations are so unique, with different abundances, densities, and environments, not to mention the fascinatingly divergent anatomies of their plants and seeds. I never know quite what to expect when I set out to assess or collect from a population, and each requires much thought and discussion.
 
Recently, my co-intern, Emma, and I collected from large populations of the native grasses Elymus glaucus and Bromus sitchensis variety carinatus. The next week, we approached a new population of these plants, separated by only a couple of miles, to find radically different population specifications. Even more distinct was the population of Lupinus microcarpus variety densiflorus that we had collected a couple weeks prior. The environments and seeds could not be any more dissimilar to the ones that we would discover when navigating those grasses.
 

With each seed I collect, I think about their capacity to repopulate barren environments, and I revisit my thoughts of Carpentaria californica. Just as this plant thrives with a big change in a new environment, so do I. Being in a new place doing new things has taught me so, so much. I have grown as a person and as a botanist, and I can’t wait to keep on learning in this incredible place.

Hugs from SNF!

Elanor 🙂