In my previous post, I discussed my field partner and I’s hunt for Eriogonum umbellatum (sulfur buckwheat) throughout the first half of the summer. The wild seed collection done by us is the first step in a long research pipeline whose goal is to elucidate the ecotypes and seed transfer zones for this plant species. As a reminder, ‘ecotype’ is sort of a profile for individual populations within a plant species. It describes the climate, soil type, and habitat that a given population has adapted to. A population of one ecotype may not be nearly as successful if it were to swap positions with that of another ecotype. As research works to elucidate these ecotypes, we can develop ‘seed transfer zones’, or maps that describe where a population of one ecotype can be predictably successful if it were planted there as part of restoration.

As I mentioned, the first half of our summer was dedicated to collecting seeds from populations in all sorts of different geographic locations and environment types. Our second half of the summer was dedicated to installing so-called ‘common gardens’, the next step in the research pipeline. These common gardens are filled with seedlings raised from prior years’ seed collection. The term ‘common’ refers to the fact that seedlings from various populations will be grown in the same environment, and evaluated for their performance.

Together with other members of the Boise Rocky Mountain Research Station, my field partner and I installed 6 total gardens in Idaho, Utah, and Nevada. Much to my chagrin, we didn’t get to plant the seeds we collected this summer, as they still need to be genotyped, cleaned, and processed. However, we did get to plant many cute seedlings from the genus Sphaeralcea (globemallow). The populations collected and later planted may be of a couple different species in this genus, though determining that with certainty is an objective of the project. Something I miss from working in agricultural research is getting to see species-level diversity right in front of your eyes. Some individuals seemed to be quite ruderal, producing flowers and seeds despite only being a few months old. There was a great amount of leaf diversity, with some leaves being heart shaped, others separated into 3 or 5 lobes, and some even resembling oak leaves. Some leaves were rounded and others serrated. There were clear differences in growth pattern as well, with some being more apically dominated and others more basal and shrub-like.

I would love to be able to watch these plants grow and mature, but my time here at the Rocky Mountain Research Station

As I drove through the forest on my last field day, I looked out the window, staring at those big ol’ Fir trees I now know and love. I began to process that this would be the last time, for a long time, that I would see this forest. When I first arrived in the Willamette National Forest, I was starstruck. Everything looked like a dream. I wondered if people out here ever got used to the beauty. Now, as I come to the end of my season, I ask myself the same question.

To answer it simply, no.

To explain further, I don’t think it’s possible to get used to it. I’m never looking at the same exact thing. The more I look at the forest, the more I find another hidden detail – a tiny cove in a riverbed, a little beetle crawling on leaves, or even just a beautiful overlook. During my time out here, I’ve been fortunate enough to witness the seasons change from early Summer to late Autumn. When I first arrived, Mt. Jefferson was coated in snow, then I watched the glaciers melt to reveal bare rock, and now, in my final week, the snow has returned. I’ve loved being up close and personal with the passage of time.

The forest changes constantly. We watched the flowers bloom into mature seeds, and the fruiting of huckleberry bushes are now replaced with fruiting fungi on the forest floor. Our sunny days are instead replaced with cloudy rain, and the forest looks completely different after rainfall – the moss is brighter, the river runs faster, and the newly fallen trees block our path. The animals go in and out of hibernation and mating – the birds I heard in early June are now replaced with October crow squawks. The roads that made me feel like I was going to summer camp in a blockbuster film now fill my mind with the tune of “Winter Wonderland”. The lighting, the colors, the noises, the weather, and even the feel of the forest are changing constantly. 

So, maybe I can’t say if I’ve gotten used to it because this forest isn’t the same as when I began. There are constantly new things to learn and new ways to understand what’s going on. As soon as we scientists think we understand the way of the land, some new research comes out revealing another one of nature’s secrets, changing how we see everything. With each piece of information I learn, I look at the forest differently.

Despite all of the changes, this forest does feel like home. All the plants that used to blur together, now feel comforting to me, like seeing an old friend. I look at the forest differently, but in a way that you look at a friend differently when you begin to understand them deeper. Even if everything wasn’t changing, I don’t think I would get used to it. Beauty isn’t something you get used to or bored by. I feel like true beauty is something you appreciate every time you see it because no matter how long you stare, your brain will never be able to comprehend how something so divine was created. So, goodbye Willamette – I hope you know how beautiful you are. 

Field work is a doorway to unique experiences you’ll never be able to recreate.

May through October in Northern Rockiest all four seasons present themselves. It snows in the mountains in May, the flowers bloom in June and July, the fires burn hot in August, the colors change in September, then the snow returns in October. Working in the Flathead National Forest for the last six months I got to witness all these seasonal transition and an incredible variety of experiences throughout them.

I’ll never forget

wondering the forest in search of rare orchids

seeing whole wet meadows full carnivorous sundew plants

trudging through the the brush in search of creeks that harbor endangered species

holding bumble bees in my bare hands

identifying tiny moonworts hidden under ferns

scouring the road sides for our rare native flowering plants

and the pure beauty of Montana’s northern forest the will inspire me for years to come

Before this internship, I spent the last three years working as an artist and scientific illustrator. Working outside almost everyday and seeing so many different ecosystems and rare plants I’ve never seen before has really inspired me.

Not only will I be using the photos I took as inspiration this winter, I was able to use my skills as an artist to enhance some herbarium vouchers for the Flathead National Forest Herbarium through painting the flower heads and bracts of certain species that wilted a lot after being collected.

Creating herbarium vouchers felt like an art project in itself, it was a very relaxing and fun aspect of botany that I enjoyed doing at the end of the season.

Among many things, field work is a doorway to unique experiences you’ll never be able to recreate. The snow in the mountains on a sunny day. The moose splashing through the creek that makes your heart stop. Hiking a dozen miles gaining 2000ft of elevation just to find that plant you were looking eaten by herbivores at the top. Every summer, every mountain, every valley, every crew is a completely different.

I am extremely grateful for Chicago Botanic Garden and the crew that I had the opportunity to be a part. This was my first season back in the field since 2020 and it was so amazing to have the skills and knowledge I learned so many years ago be brought back to the surface. The encouragement from for the team at the Chicago Botanic Garden and the Flathead National Forest Botany crew has given me the confidence, motivation and connections I needed to pursue the next steps in my education and go to graduate school. I will be taking the knowledge I learned from this internship with me into my graduate project. Including but not limited to specimen collection, herbarium voucher creation, site data collection, data management and reporting.

The ending of a field season is always bittersweet. I am grateful that I live in Montana and don’t have to leave these Mountains behind, but I will miss this internship and will carry it with me into my next adventures as I hope to many more seasons of rare experiences.

Erynn – Flathead Nation Forest, MT

As the frost becomes more frequent in the Chugach, October is filled with bittersweet moments as the season ends. Our final seed collection excursions had an underlying mournfulness. Seeing the fruits (I suppose they’re seeds) of my labor as bags full of seeds after processing and cleaning filled my heart with satisfaction and fulfillment. With that fulfillment came a twinge of sadness, knowing that the season was over and my days romping around the wilderness with my field partner were gone. The end of the season also came with the excitement of fall seed sowing. I delivered seeds to the Anchorage Water and Soil Conservation District for grow out several times, and we got to direct sow Artemisia arctica, Angelica lucida, Heracleum maximum, and Calamagrostis canadensis at the Resurrection Creek restoration site. Through this process, I witnessed how my work this field season will directly impact my home state and the restoration of its natural spaces. (and it was fun!)

By October, we had harvested most of the species on our target species list, but there was one that I couldn’t let evade me: Artemisia tilesii. I noticed significant patches when I scouted for fish with a friend in the Anchorage area on the Bureau of Land Management and Municipality of Anchorage parkland. I had also noticed some at the Anchorage Botanical Garden growing in their wild spaces while on a date (the native plant obsession never pauses, even on a date.) So, I contacted The Bureau of Land Management, the Municipality of Anchorage, and the Anchorage Botanical Garden to gain permission to harvest on their land. All organizations obliged, letters of agreement were drawn, and my field partner and I got to travel to Anchorage for a tilesii collection. Our efforts seemed in vain when I set out to clean the seed during one of my last weeks, though, as they were infested with some weird, goopy sacks we deemed the “Goopy bois.” My mentor researched the mysterious “goopy bois” and discovered they were Trypeta flaveola (fruit fly) eggs. Although they aren’t considered especially harmful pests for the plants, we hesitated to send the infected seed to our grower. I spent hours brainstorming and experimenting with ways to clean the seed from these eggs. Finally, I found a sieve sufficient to separate the two post-cleaning with our mechanical seed cleaner, the “Clipper Office Tester.” Once most eggs were separated, I plucked the rest out with tweezers. Finally, I had my pure collection of Artemisia tilesii seeds ready to grow out for the restoration site. 

An exciting part of the end of the season was mounting our herbarium vouchers. We had carefully and meticulously arranged plants for pressing all season long and finally got to create the final product. Creating the labels came with some headaches, as most data organization tends to, but it resulted in satisfying and beautiful labels for our vouchers. I had never mounted a voucher before this; my closest experience was pressing flowers to glue on construction paper for arts and crafts as a child. It turns out mounting vouchers is essentially the same thing: doing so more mindfully! I found immense joy in mounting the vouchers, even the pesky long, delicate, and abundant graminoids. Each voucher came out like a work of art. Thankfully, my work with vouchers didn’t have to end there. I had two weeks left after my field partner’s season ended because I came to the forest later. Because of this, I got to work on a project I was excited about after tying up all the loose ends from seed collection the week after her departure. My last week was cataloging herbarium vouchers from the Chugach National Forest Herbarium. There are thousands of specimens and no records compiling all of their data. I started the cataloging process by visiting the Herbarium and entering the data for as many specimens as possible. To some, that might sound like a snooze, but for me, there was no better way to cap off the season than to look at plant specimens from 1964 to now and aid in their immortalization by recording their data. (Also, how cool is it that collections I made will be stored for future botanists to reference?!)

It’s challenging to express the depth of my gratitude for this internship and the realization of many of my aspirations. The dream of being a scientist, the dream of working in a National Forest, the dream of contributing to the restoration of natural spaces in my home, and the dream of continuing the native plant legacy in my family – these aspirations have been realized. I went on excursions to monitor wildlife, maintain bird nesting boxes, hike and explore almost daily, harvest native seeds, spread native seeds, and collaborate with other botanists on native seed collection and restoration from different organizations. This experience allowed me to connect with people who share my love for the natural world, and through all of this, I was able to nourish my soul. 

This opportunity has transformed me from a native plant enthusiast to a full-on botany nerd. Before this position, I enjoyed foraging for berries and a few native plant species greens, but I never imagined I would memorize the Latin names of so many species. Now, I find myself knowing some species only by their scientific names, most by several common names and their scientific names. As I stroll through nature, I mutter the names of the plants around me and eagerly share the information I’ve gathered this summer with anyone who is with me (and willing to listen.) This behavior might not be entirely new for me, as I spent years guiding at a remote lodge and created a plant tour on a muskeg full of ethnobotanical facts. However, now, the information I get to share is far more in-depth and spread across a plethora of new species. The joy of sharing this knowledge is as fulfilling as the knowledge itself. Before this experience, I was still determining my career path. I knew I wanted to work in ecology, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to focus more on wildlife or botany. Now, I know that botany is the route I would love to pursue. Part of me wishes this was a permanent position and that I could explore the wilderness and harvest native seeds every field season, but I know that future CLM interns will have life-changing experiences like mine, and I am so excited for them to experience it. I was nervous at the beginning of this season, knowing I had no formal botany education, but passion and curiosity quickly propelled me to gain the knowledge I needed not only to succeed but to flourish in this position.

After 6 months here at the HLC NF, it’s all finally coming to an end. It still doesn’t feel real to me as I’m typing this, but in just a few days I’ll be heading back to Pennsylvania to prepare for my next big move. This all a bit bittersweet for me. I’m overall excited to bring the skills I have gained through this program into whatever endeavor I decide to pursue next, but there are a few things that I am really going to miss about this place.

For starters: the view. It is unlike anything else I have seen before and it has been an absolute privilege to call this forest my home. I mean just look at this! It’s absolutely breathtaking!

I’m also going to miss the people that I have spent so much time with over the summer. A part of not living near a lot of people is naturally getting closer to the people who are near you. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the people I met through this internship.

I’m not sure if anyone considering this position will read this, but in the slight chance that someone in that exact position comes across I will offer up a bit of advice:

Don’t pass this up. There is so much that you will learn from a season in the program and you’ll be able to see different parts of the country that you haven’t been to yet.

Signing off one last time,

Nick