Before starting my internship, I had a grand idea in my head. I pictured myself hiking through a lush forest, finding colorful flowers everywhere I looked, and being swept away by the forest’s beauty. Then my mom looked up my ranger station on Google Earth. The images showed the station in the middle of chaparral, with no trees in sight, let alone a whole forest. Although my day dreams of frolicking through the forest seemed to be crushed, I kept my spirits high, knowing I would have an amazing experience no matter where I was working.

As I drove to the station on my first day, my dreams were restored. I know you are not supposed to trust everything you see on the internet, and this was a perfect example of why. As I drove through the twists and turns of the mountain roads, I was in awe at the forest surrounding me. The massive Jeffery Pines and abundant wildlife blew me away, however this was not the most shocking element of the forest. When I opened my door, I was overwhelmed by the sweet butterscotch smell of the pines. I had been taught that if you approached a Jeffery Pine and stuck your nose in-between the bark scales, you could smell butterscotch. No matter how many times I tried this in the past, I could not smell anything. However, in this new land of adventure, the smell was everywhere, I felt like I was in a candy store who had just taken a huge lick of a Butterscotch Dum-Dum.

The next three weeks were filled with very similar experiences. Time after time I believed I knew what would be around the next turn on the dirt mountain road, however, after coming around the bend, the unexpected would be staring back at me. We have found springs in the middle of dry patches, meadows in the middle of heavy forest, and massive pines that stick out amongst the rest.

My partner and I have been tasked with collecting native seeds for a pollinator garden, however we have decided to expand the project, and also create a collection of different pollinators from the area. Although collecting seeds can be tedious, trying to catch a Carpenter Bee can be nerve-wracking. None of the hikes we have been on have caused my heart to race like it does when I am sticking my hand into a net with a plastic bag to capture the bee inside.

So far our seed collection is comprised mainly of Cobwebby Thistle, Cirsium occidentale, which has been painful to collect and clean. We are hoping that as the summer progresses, other species will soon go into seed and be ready for us to collect. For now we are taking what we can get, and running around chasing bees and butterflies with nets like fools. I can not wait to see what other candy I can find in the candy shop that is the Los Padres National Forest.

Sincerely,

Sophia

Los Padres National Forest, U.S. Forest Service

Los Padres National Forest, Frazier Park

I have been stomata deep for the past two weeks in McCall for what feels like botany summer camp and I am nothing short of wilted. Instead of attending the Chicago Training I took a summer Advanced Field Botany intensive through the University of Idaho. It has exceeded my expectations in many regards but has left me feeling like I know even less about plants, the world of angiosperms continues to expand for me and makes me feel like I will be studying this for the rest of my life. Both confirming and overwhelming.

The class schedule is as follows, one day in the field collecting voucher specimens and one day in lecture in the lab keying out what we collected the day prior. Below is a picture of the class organizing our collections in the field.

After we organize it in the field we clean the specimens up and put them in a large press and then in a plant dryer. Tower of Pisa am I right??

A big part of the class has been orienting myself again to phylogeny, especially since the professors do a lot of work on phylogeny, specifically on the Super Asterids. I woke up early to write it out on the board the other day.

One of the instructors wrote out all the angiosperm families on the board according to order and phylogeny.

All in all it has been actually a really expansive experience. It has been nice getting away from the dry deserts of Southern Idaho and being in the lush and abundant forest and mountains and lakes of central/western Idaho. I have keyed out a lot of plants in the last two weeks and feel re-inspired to continue studying by myself and pursue a degree eventually. All in all, even though I am totally wiped from this class, I wish I could take it again and get even deeper into genre specific questions, key even more gramanoids, and try and dip my toes into lycophytes.

Here some cool shots from the class and some of my favorite showy flowers.

Xerophyllum tenax, A bumpin’ year for Bear Grass here

Scutlleria galericulata

Pedicularis groenlandica

Mimulus breweri, baby monkey flowers are my favorite

A view into Hells Canyon in the Payette National Forest

Clematis hirsutissima, I love showy ranuncs’

Classmates collecting on an allium flat full on Alliums, Calochortus, Penstemons, etc.

A little subalpine Nuphar pond

Aconitum columbianum in white flower

New England is absolutely stunning. When I originally applied to the SOS internship with New England Wildflower Society, I was nervous to be far from my home in Georgia, but eager to learn new flora, see new landscapes, and create rewarding memories with fellow plant enthusiasts. I did not realize the vast diversity of landscapes that I would be able to see and study. I have only studied Botany in the Ohio area because that is where my college was located. New England has introduced me to much more than the beech-maple forest and deciduous woodlands that I was used to studying. Our SOS trips so far have ranged from dry sand dunes, salt marshes, freshwater wetlands, bogs with lush Sphagnum mats.

Ponkapog Bog in Canton, MA. So lush!

I have learned so many species of water-loving plant that has made me view coastal flora in awe. Among my love for these species I have also found a new-found love for graminoids. My fascination sparked when I first saw a Sparganium in flower.

Sparganium americanum in flower. So beautiful!

The intricacy of the male and female flower is nothing I have seen before from a grass-like plant, especially a plant that is so morphologically different then the Typha, which is also in the Typhaceae family. When we started learning more about the other graminoid families Cyperaceae, Juncaceae, and Poaceae the intricate details of these flowers and seeds were beautiful. Although Poaceae is still daunting to me after taking a course at NEWFS garden, Poaceae, Cyperaceae and Juncaceae are as fun to look at as they are sometimes challenging to identify. The seed heads and seeds are cool too! The perigynia in the sedges look similar to awesome and fleshy medieval maces. In the Juncaceae family, the little tubercles that crown the achenes of Eleocharis like little fertile queens ready to be sown into the ground. In fact, we made our first collection yesterday of Eleocharis palustris.

The love of my life, yet the bane of my existence in deep mud flats: Eleocharis palustris

There had been a big rain before we got to the muddy wetland area. As I was searching for mature seed heads I could not help but fall right through the mud, thighs deep. I dug myself out and crawled on all fours to get to more stable ground to continue to collect. After laying my eyes on those cute little tubercles, I decided that I did not mind repeatedly sinking in the deep mud with flooded boots for these achenes. My eyes have been opened to the beauty of graminoids and I cannot get enough. The diversity of graminoids is something that I am eager to explore further in this internship and beyond!

As someone who has grown up in the humid, temperate woodlands of Pennsylvania, the exposure to the western climate has been interesting… Just last week, a fire, dubbed “earthstone”, had started right behind our apartment and still continues to burn through mid-eastern Nevada. (The biggest fire I’ve seen in PA are football bonfires, rallying the fans and the team to defeat our number-one rival.) With barely any trees and never-ending sagebrush expanses, adjusting to this new, extremely open place seemed intimidating. The first few weeks I had to adjust to the unrelenting dry heat and the sudden increase in elevation… let’s just say my exercise regime was “revised”. The nosebleeds almost every other day was super fun too.

Our project working on the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest has us looking for only ONE target species, but we have a list of a total of 80 opportunistic plant species to collect seed from if we come across it. With no historical points to access target species, our job is to scout and mark collectible populations. This large, inclusive project comprises of target species that are essential to pollinators, sage grouse, and range management. Restoration and preservation of diversity are the overarching goals. I am super grateful to be apart of a project that includes so many facets to science and the community.

Image of a sphinx moth obtaining nectar and pollinating nettleleaf giant hyssop (Agastache urticifolia)

Since we’ve been exploring the HT districts, the only thing we’ve been hearing from the locals is that we are lucky to have visited Nevada this year. The large snowfall over the winter has provided the wildflowers more than enough water to thrive and give us such beautiful views!

View from the Santa Rosa district located at the north-central portion of NV near the Oregon border. If you look close enough, you’ll see our #1 enemy: the cow.

As we explore the wilderness of the HT districts, I have become extraordinarily thankful for major (paved) highways. The rocky gravel roads that we use to scout for plant species can be driven at a max of 25 mph. Patience is much needed in these places with no cell service and not a person in sight. Payton (my coworker/roommate from Ohio) and I have much to learn in these lonely places, but at least we have each other to endure the ceaseless driving and triple-digit heat.

Over and out!

Alyssa Hay

USFS Reno/Sparks

Wow! It’s hard to believe that already a month has gone by since I embarked on this journey to begin work as a Seeds of Success (SOS) intern in Taos, New Mexico. It all started with a road trip from eastern Oregon to Taos, which my mom and I completed in 2 and a half days, leaving me just enough time to drop my stuff at my newly acquired apartment and drive to Albuquerque. There my mom and I snagged a couple hours of sleep before I hopped on a plane to Chicago, and she hopped on one back to Oregon.

One of the places my mom and I stopped on our trip down was Arches National Park. Here’s a view of Delicate Arch.

The training in Chicago took place at the Chicago Botanic Garden, and covered a myriad of topics including Seeds of Success (SOS) protocol, common plant families in the western United States, and field sampling techniques. The garden was honestly one of the most beautiful places that I’ve ever been, and I highly recommend it to anyone that happens to find themselves in the Chicago area. In addition, the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower is a pretty awesome sight if you enjoy heights and great views!

On the observation floor of Willis Tower, they had clear boxes sticking off the side of the building. They made for great pictures, and spectacular (if a touch unnerving) views from 103 stories up. I personally loved being in them!

A view of one of the islands in the Japanese Garden section of the Chicago Botanic Garden

I went to the butterfly garden and was able to get this picture of one of the beautiful butterflies!

A huge statue of Carl Linnaeus on one of his botanizing adventure at the Chicago Botanic Garden

I fell in love with the bonsai exhibit in the courtyard of the building where we had our training classes.

A tiny white house in the miniature train garden

After returning to Taos, I had the chance to get a little more settled in my apartment before heading off to another training in Santa Fe. We learned about safety in the field, and were introduced to key people in the New Mexico SOS program. We also were told about the origins of the SOS program, the formation of which was prompted by a particularly bad wildfire season around the year 2000 that placed attention on the lack of native adapted seeds for use in restoration work. I was able to meet my mentor and supervisor Lillis Urban, and learn how to use the office tablet to document our seed collections. After the classroom portion of the training, our group of interns, BLM, and Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE) employees headed down to Red Canyon Preserve in southern New Mexico to do some camping. We made our first SOS seed collection there, and got some practice filling out the data sheet that we use for all our collections. We also practiced determining soil type and color, and pressing plant specimens for use in herbarium sheets.

During the Santa Fe portion of the training, we took a short hike to see some petroglyphs. I had never seen petroglyphs before, so it was a really nice treat!

It took me forever to find a place for my tent where I didn’t think the wind would blow it over, but when I did pick a spot, it ended up being on a bunch of rocks. Not my best thought out plan, but it sure was an ascetically pleasing spot!

A gorgeous sunrise that I saw while sleeping in the truck bed during our training at Red Canyon Preserve

Our tiny tent village before a brief downpour. The wind here meant business!

During training, we ventured into the mountains, where, much to my delight, we saw some trees!

On our way back to Taos, we stopped by the University of New Mexico herbarium, and were able to see beautiful herbarium sheets like this one.

After that training, my fellow SOS intern and I spent a week in the Taos BLM office orienting to the resources available to us, finishing the data sheet from our Red Canyon Preserve collection, taking a 5 hour long defensive driving course online, and learning how to change the tire on our work truck. It was a good thing we practiced, because it took us nearly an hour and a half, and now we know at exactly which point to place the jack.

This last week that I just finished up was the first one where me and my partner got a hands on taste for what our job will be like for the bulk of the season. Basically what we will do is go into areas managed by the BLM or Forest Service, scout out populations of native plants, and collect seeds from populations that meet certain requirements. The seeds then are sent to a special seed cleaning facility in Bend, Oregon so that they can be cleaned and stored. A portion of those seed can then be used in research and the development of growing protocols, so that one day farmers can grow these native plants, resulting in a greater number of native seeds being available for use in restoration work. For a population to qualify for an SOS collection, there must be more than 50 individuals and you must collect at least 10,000 seeds. However, you can’t collect more than 20% of the ripe seeds in the population within a single day.  To this end, my partner and I spent Monday scouting out a few populations to see if they were large enough for a collection, and Wednesday making our first official solo seed collection. The lucky plant was Elymus elmoides, a grass otherwise known as Bottlebrush Squirreltail. The collection was fairly simple, although it was made a bit harder by the heat and the sun. Being out in the field was exciting, but also a bit overwhelming. It made me realize all the things that I don’t know or am unsure of. It was hard not knowing the names of most of the plants that I was seeing and trying to estimate if a population would yield enough seeds for a collection. I have so much to learn, but I know that with practice and dedication, I will eventually hit my stride.

This area at the base of Ute Mountain is where I spent the bulk of my field time during this past week.

Off in the distance, you can see the light colored band of plants that made up our first collection.

Afternoon storms showing up over the not so distant mountain range have been the norm during our few days of field work there.

After spending a couple days in the field, we attended a training on how to tell the difference between wasps, bees and flies (harder than you might think!) on Thursday, as well as a training on soil sampling techniques on Friday. It was interesting to learn more about bees, since that has never been something that I’ve known much about. I learned that in the United States, there are about 4,000 species of bees! I had no idea that there were so many, or that a quarter of those species can be found in New Mexico.

The location of our bee training

Moving down to New Mexico was a big step for me. I’m one of 5 children, and am very close to my family. Additionally I just graduated with my undergraduate degree last year. So this is my first time truly living on my own, outside of the sheltered safety of my family’s house or a college campus. Missing my family makes it even more difficult. To distract myself, and because I love adventures, I’ve done some exploring in my downtime. I made a journey to the Gorge Bridge, with its beautiful high up views, and the local Earthship community. The Earthship community fascinated me, and I honestly think that I might consider living that way some day. Earthships are an amazing type of self sustaining housing. Their walls are made from dirt filled used tires rescued from landfills. They produce their own power from solar and wind energy, and get all their water from precipitation. The water goes on to be used 4 times with filtering in between, and the houses include greenhouse space for growing food, even in the dead of winter!

Here are some basic Earthship models.

The greenhouse portion of the visitor center Earthship

I’ve quickly discovered a natural health culture here in Taos, which I love. The farmer’s market is spectacular, and there is a grocery store within a mile of my apartment that sells all sorts of organic, non-GMO, and gluten free foods, as well as a whole array of vitamins and natural health and body care products. It is probably the most wonderful and fascinating store that I have ever been in.

Since I have been here in Taos, I have learned so much, both in my internship and in my extracurricular adventures. I am so excited to continue exploring and voraciously perusing new knowledge wherever I go!

Until next time!

Sierra                                                                                                                             Seeds of Success Intern                                                                                               BLM Taos, NM

I’m enjoying learning about the plants of the sagebrush steppe in Southern Idaho. Most of my botany training was along the Front Range of Colorado, so I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find many familiar plants hidden between the sagebrush. Before starting this internship I had very few expectations- I had never been to Idaho and didn’t know much about the state except for its famous potatoes (which is conveniently written on all the license plates). After just two short weeks, I’ve begun to appreciate all of the hidden beauty this state has to offer.

Idaho truly is a hidden gem (but don’t tell anyone). One of my biggest hobbies and passions is rock climbing. In Colorado, the climbing is world-class and people flock to the state to climb in Rifle, Eldorado Canyon, Rocky Mountain National Park, etc. However, two weekends ago I got to climb the amazing formations in City of Rocks National Reserve and Castle Rocks State Park. I was blown away by the beauty of the area, friendliness of the people, and quality of the climbing.

This is part of the view from the top of a multi-pitch climb called Sinocranium.

Myself and two other CLM interns 650 ft up!

After spending most of the time training during the first two weeks, I’m very excited to spend more time outdoors doing field work. We are conducting Modified AIM (Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring) surveys to assess the area’s suitability as sage grouse habitat. Right now, that means we have been getting to know the flora of Idaho better; I’ve enjoyed diving into the complicated world that is plant terminology and dichotomous keys. It’s been a little while since I’ve gotten this nerdy about botany but I’ve found the skills coming back. (Thank you to my plant ID professor at CSU!)

Linum lewisii– Wild blue flax

Ok, I realize this isn’t a plant. But he’s so cute!

This past weekend I got a chance to explore Craters of the Moon National Monument, which is within the boundaries of our field office in Shoshone. This landscape was truly unique- giant underground caves formed by lava tubes, spatter cones, and best of all…wildflowers! The tiny dwarf monkeyflowers were in bloom everywhere! We picked an ideal time to visit.

Mimulus nanus– Dwarf monkeyflower

Lewisia rediviva– Bitterroot

So, with my first few weeks under my belt, I can say that I think I’m going to like this place. My internship is equipping me with valuable skills and re-igniting my passion for botany; my weekend explorations are allowing me to explore all this state has to offer. I can’t wait to see what else is in store.

Savanna

Shoshone Field Office

Bureau of Land Management

Here are some things that are completely new to me:

1. The desert. I am originally from Ohio and the move to Nevada has been a tough one. I have always loved the woods and being surrounded by trees. Definitely strange to be able to look out onto miles and miles of sage brush landscape. Luckily, we are really close to Lake Tahoe (which has trees!!!!)
2. Dirt. Everything is covered in dirt. My car. The inside and outside of the work truck. My boots. Our tubs. Our equipment. Me, most of the time.
3. The absence of rain. It has rained ONE time since I have been in NV, which has been around two months. What is this nonsense?! Where are my beloved thunderstorms?!
4. Casinos. Casinos everywhere. I don’t understand Nevada and their obsession with casinos. Doing laundry? There are slot machines there. Shopping for groceries? They have you covered, gambler’s delight. What about getting gas? No worries, the whole other side of the gas station is a casino.
5. Fire. I just read that there are currently 15 active wildfires in NV. A fairly large one, that is called Earthstone burned 41,000 acres and started pretty much in my backyard. We had to evacuate our house because of it and now everything smells like smoke and is charred black.
   

   Earthstone fire, taken from my house as it burned down the canyon.

6. Elevation. I am a runner (let’s be honest, not a good one, but I try) but the change from basically sea level in Ohio to 6,000 feet+ here in Nevada has been a really strange transition. For a couple of weeks, I got winded from just climbing a flight of stairs.
7. Cows. I don’t think I have ever been close to a cow in my entire life. Now, I chase cows with my work truck on a weekly basis. They are the bane of my existence and will remain my enemy for the rest of time.
   

   Santa Rosa District in northern NV near Winnemucca.

I feel as though Alyssa (my fellow intern) and I are not your average SOS team. Our species list consists of only (semi-rare) flowering plants which has required a lot of research and so far, a lot of hit-and-miss scouting. We have limited information on sites to explore, so we have to scout the entire district. Our most important species, Erigeron speciosus has been illusive so far. We work all over the state and recently spent a lot of time in the Santa Rosa district. There, we thought we found Erigeron speciosus but didn’t, buried our truck in mud and ripped off our passenger side mirror. This week, we have a short break and will begin our exploration and scouting on Monday! Hopefully we have better luck!

What we thought was Erigeron speciosus but is actually Erigeron pumilus.

Cheers to all the other interns working their butts off and good luck with collections!

May the odds be ever in your favor!

-Payton Kraus
USFS Sparks, NV