Last week I took a solo scouting/collection trip to North-western New Jersey. I was scouting for Sambucus canadensis var. nigra, as well as some other species that were requested for a restoration project on the Musconetcong river. There have been a series of dam removals along this tributary of the Delaware river in the past few years, and the project coordinators are looking for genetically appropriate wetland species from ecoregions 67 and 58 to restore the river banks and floodplains

Ecoregions 67 and 58 are in the Appalachian highland region of New Jersey, not far from the Delaware Water gap. It is so much different from the pitch pine lowland habitats of South Jersey that I’m used to. So, it was very exciting for me to explore the cliffs and caves hidden under Hornbeam canopies..

I found Sambucus at multiple sites, but unfortunately not in great enough numbers to warrant collecting. I did find other restoration species like Cornus amomum (Silky dogwood), Apios americana (American ground-nut), and Viburnum acerifolium (Maple-leaf viburnum). As well as species I have never encountered before like, Celtis occidentalis (American Hackberry), Vaccinium staminum (Tall deer berry), and Corylus cornuta (Beaked hazelnut).

Here are some photos of my favorite discoveries from this trip.

*~The Fairy Hole~*

Archaeological evidence suggest this was ceremonial cave for Lenape. The Fairy Hole looks out at Ghost Lake, inside Jenny Jump State Forest.

The most Beautiful (Chicken) Mushroom.

This is New Jersey?
YES!
A huge agricultural valley seen from Shades of Death Road in Hope, NJ

Big ol’ Solomon Seal

Corylus cornuta  (Beaked Hazelnut)

These filberts dominated the forest under story along with the Tall Deer Berry. TASTY.

Asclepias incarnata (Swamp Milkweed)

For a nerd like me, this soil map of a wildlife management area is like a work of art.

I’ll stick to what I’m good at. Botany, not blogging.

All in all, this was a successful trip. I made two small collections of Carex species, and found several other potential collections for later on in the season. I’m so excited to be helping to restore habitats damaged by water impoundments. The net positive ecological impacts of dam removal is a great motivator for the Mid-Atlantic Regional Seed Bank to find these species and collect them.

Here is a link to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service blog where there is a video of a dam removal that occurred December 2016.

Video: Time-Lapse of Hughesville Dam Removal

The page contains a lot of links to other info on the past, present, and future dam removal projects along the Musconetcong river in New Jersey. CHECK IT OUT.

In my second season at the Chesapeae and Ohio Canal National Historical Park I found several new occurrences of RTE plant species and recorded three new species for the canal.  That puts the total number of new rare and endangered plant species I discovered while doing survey work over the last two years at seven.  These seven species were Gymnocladus dioicus, Trichostema brachiatum, Heracleum maximum, Ribes americanum, Panax quinquefolius, Aristolochia macrophylla and Liparis liliifolia.  The Ribes americanum discovery was the first time that plant had been seen in Maryland for over 100 years and is listed as extirpated.

I greatly expanded my knowledge of riverine habitats and their associated disturbances. I surveyed several areas of high quality limestone habitat and floodplain forests.  I learned valuable lessons in regards to managing a large database of rare plant records and was introduced to the process of writing and submitting a scientific paper for publication.  I met a lot of nice people working for the National Park Service and saw some of the challenges facing the agency.

I had the opportunity to participate in a sedge workshop in Syracuse, New York led by Tony Reznicek.  Tony is a very nice man and an extraordinary botanist.  Getting the chance to meet him was one of the highlights of my internship.

Tony Reznicek discussing sedge things on a field trip in New York.

I also wanted to mention that I stumbled upon a book called Wild Flowers of the Alleghanies by Joseph E. Harned.  This is a very interesting book by one of the less celebrated botanists of Maryland.  In the book I found an autographed photo of the author.  I don’t know how or why it got there but it was a pleasant surprise.  The excerpt on Aristolochia macrophylla I included in my previous post was from this book.  It doesn’t have any keys but some of the species descriptions include interesting comments.  I really dig this kind of thing and thought I’d share.

I love old botany books and this was a fine addition to my collection.

This job over the past two seasons has been one of my favorite seasonal positions.  I’d like to thank the park staff and the Chicago Botanic Garden for making this opportunity possible.

While doing some research on the land-use history of one section of the park I came across some interesting information and photos.  Our park keeps physical documents of the land acquisition transactions that took place when tracts were being bought and added to the canal boundary.  Among these records were appraisals.  These appraisals included timber values and documentation of all structures on a tract of land.  The timber appraisals even listed the number of trees over 14” dbh and the species, although it wasn’t always specific for some groups like maples and ash.  You could get a rough idea of the character of the forest at that time.  Pictures of structures were also included.  They were meant to document the structure only but some photos showed the surrounding landscape.  These photos and maps helped show the extent of disturbance during that time period.

One of the seasonal/recreational structures found along the Potomac River. This photo is from the 1970s. When the National Park Service obtained these properties most of these structures were removed.

I assisted a contract botanist with his survey on canal lands this month.  I always find it interesting to talk with botanists in the private sector about their experiences.  We had a successful couple of days surveying and found 6 new rare plant records for that portion of the canal.

View from atop one of the bluffs that was surveyed.

One of the plants we found was a new species for the park.  Aristolochia macrophylla is listed as imperiled (S2) for the state of Maryland.  The synonym for it is Isotrema macrophyllum.  Previous records for this plant in Maryland are from Garrett and Allegany counties.  This plant was found in Washington County which borders Allegany County.  After reading up on this plant I found out that is or was planted widely as an ornamental.  This information and the fact that the vines I found were near a lock and next to a pile of gravel, lead me to believe that this occurrence is probably an escaped population.   I ran into a similar situation with Kentucky Coffeetree (Gymnocladus dioicus) which is a state-listed tree but widely planted in the area.  I will include all this information in my records and still map the occurrence for the park’s database.  I also plan to reach out to the state botanist to get his opinion.

Aristolochia macrophylla (Pipvine)

Aristolochia macrophylla (Pipevine) climbing up a Sycamore tree.

Here’s an excerpt from a old plant guide I purchased this season that the interesting pollination strategy of this vine.

I didn’t get to catch this one in flower but I wish I did after reading this.

Lastly, I found this cool looking Sphinx Moth (Eumorpha pandorus) on a Hackberry (Celtis occidnetalis) leaf along the canal towpath.  I also found an early-instar Giant Swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes) caterpillar on the leaf of the state-listed (MD) shrub, Hop tree (Ptelea trifoliata).   The Giant Swallowtail is a state-listed butterfly in Maryland and I was glad to finally sight one.  The caterpillar’s strategy of disguising itself as bird poop is really interesting in my opinion.

Sphinx Moth (Eumorpha pandorus)

Giant Swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes) caterpillar

Those are the highlights from July.

Almost since we first arrived in May, we’ve been hearing about preparations for the eclipse. The path of totality went through the northern part of our field office and thousands of visitors were expected to pour into the area. No one knew exactly how many people would come but there was general fear that the traffic would overwhelm the two highways north and unprecedented demand would empty remote, rural gas stations and grocery stores. There was even talk that highways would come to a complete standstill and be shut down. Our office planned teams to drive around with extra supplies, rescuing stuck cars, checking campsites, and teaching people about fire safety. There was so much buildup, we almost didn’t go see it. Luckily, we braved the craziness and found no major issues.

One of the interns and I drove a couple hours north to the Salmon-Challis National Forest to be in the path of totality. It was one of the strangest and coolest things I’ve ever seen. For most of the partial eclipse, if you didn’t have the glasses, you would hardly know anything was different. The sun is so powerful half the sun is nearly as bright as a normal sunny day. Through the glasses, it looked like a cookie with a bite out of it at first and gradually shrank down to look like a crescent moon. By the time it got down to a tiny sliver, the day had dimmed noticeably,. It was almost like twilight but without the golden or reddish tinge that usually accompanies sunrise or sunset. At some point as it darkened, the crickets began chirping and the birds began twittering as if it were evening.

At the moment that the sun finally disappeared, everything went silent for  a second and then the crickets began chirping again like crazy. I expected totality to be darker, like the middle of the night. Instead, there was still some light, it was more like an hour or so after sunset. There was even a pink tinge on the horizon. The sun looked incredible. I wasn’t able to get a good picture during totality, but this photo captures it the best.

Totality ended so fast. In a matter of seconds the light went from dark, to dim and bluish, to normal daylight. It seemed to end so much faster than it began/

Things have seemed to settle into a rhythm. Almost every day I come to work, grab the keys, hop in the white Ford F150, and drive between 1-3 hours to a site by myself. At the site I do things like recording GPS tracks of trails, collecting Visitor Use data, or sometimes even picking up trash. All that time alone on the open road can be lonely (especially in Wyoming), but it still beats sitting in front of a computer!

It feels like I’m trying out two (not so different) possible career paths- BLM Employee and Truck Driver.

Every day I see about seven times more hoofed animals than humans.

My view after scrambling up part of a new trail I GPSd

Sometimes truck driving can be beautiful! Little detour I took through Crazy Woman Canyon

Crazy Woman Canyon detour

The highlights of this internship is when I get to help out teaching science lessons or outdoor ethics at day camps or to school groups, always in an outdoor setting. Last week I got to hang out with a bunch of six year olds!

Young Naturalists!

To continue the saga I will pick up where I left off, on my way to the Contento family stomping grounds, Chicago.

Walking into the Chicago Botanical Garden for the first time, every memory and picture of what Chicago was that I had in my mind was wiped clean. The cold winters where I was introduced to long wool coats, wind burn and tall buildings, paled in comparison to the abundance of exotic flowers and islands in the web of lakes that is the garden. (I should probably just admit I am not a city girl). This garden is 385 acres, home to prairie lands, a butterfly garden, a pinyon pine bonsai that is 300 years old, tropical greenhouses with a giant gummy bear looking plant sculpture, more ponds than people, red winged black birds, miniature tree gardens and a whole bunch of plant nerds.

If you were thinking that I just described paradise, you would be correct. Besides the amazing line up of researchers, presentations and plant ID, this was like summer camp for plant lovers. I couldn’t have ask for a better time.

Gummy Bear Plant – Better known by it’s gelatin name: Gummius osois

Day at the beach

Mother and daughter time

After getting back from back east we headed west to Meeker for some Physaria congesta and obcordata. Lucky for us this meant some quality time counting over 2,000 P. obcordata with another CLM intern out of the Meeker field office whom I had met the week prior in Chicago. After hours on our knees with our faces 20 cm from the ground, made better with the good humor and constant positive outlook of Anna Wilson,  we wandered around to find other Physaria plots to create a better picture of the plant populations on a landscape level.

Cirsium scopulorum

Brooke and I enjoying the rocky roads in the Mosquito Range

Part of the fun of being in the BLM State Office is that we get to work with different district offices on rare plant projects. Some of the fun of working with Carol Dawson is getting to work with a variety of great people. For this project we had to pleasure of meeting up with Mit McGlaughlin and his summer field botany class from the University of Northern Colorado. Looking for Astragalus osterhoutii and Penstemon penlandii with a group full of mostly pre-med majors presented its hurdles, but luckily their enthusiasm and Mit’s sense of humor made the week another enjoyable gathering of plant people.

Class from UNC

The Arapaho & Roosevelt National Forests area where this T&E monitoring was located was an interesting place. Our camp site ran alongside a conveyor belt that was holding the bounty of molybdenum from the Henderson mine about a tenth of a mile from our camp site. The area where we were monitoring was near the Wolford Mountain reservoir that, when created, flooded much of the existing population of these two plant species. In addition, when considering the plant for listing it was predicted that the reservoir would get so much use that the plant would be in danger. On the bright side, in the three days that we were out there we only saw 2 boats and 1 person fishing. All of these factors were then exacerbated by the fact that, in order to create more fodder for cattle in the area, in the 1950’s, 4 lbs per acre of Crested Wheat grass was planted near the reservoir.  This grass is potentially out competing the Penstemon and Astragalus for resources.

Working with so many different organizations has been such a highlight for me in this internship and we were not disappointed when again, last week we met up with a group of people from the Forest Service, BLM and Mosquito Range Heritage Initiative. Counting the large number of very small Eutrema penlandii would never have been possible without the 17 people who joined us in the alpine habitat in the Mosquito Range. This little guy, found only in Park county loves fen areas, where Pikas chirped at the churning of the clouds and the rumble of the impending storms and where the peaks of 14’ers loom in the distance. It was such a pleasure to experience new areas, new people and new insight into how Fish and Wildlife, BLM, Forest Service and non profits work together for the good of a species.

Plot in Mosquito Range

Frasera

At some point in all of this Denver had a little visit from a man named Ryan Zinke. It was an awesome opportunity to not just read a news article about the Secretary of the Interior but see him in person. There was a few hard hitting questions regarding climate change and National Parks preservation which made the talk worth while and was also a nice day to sit in the grass outside.  Starting up here in August we have our last few field outings. I am excited to delve into some data, collect some seeds, and learn a little bit more about some endangered plant species.

Until then,

Taryn

Colorado State Office BLM