Like every other work day, my seed collection partner, Tori, and I planned out a route through the forest to travel. Most of the first couple months working in the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest involved scouting out populations and exploring new parts of the forest, but this time would be the first day dedicated solely to seed collection and brought along two Montana Conservation Corps interns who were stationed at the same forest as us this summer. The population we would be collecting from was near a small pond in the Castle mountains of the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest. Tori had scouted it out at the end of last week and said it was ready to collect. The aim was to spend the whole day collecting Geum triflorum, or prairie smoke. 

We drove for an hour and a half, stopping along the way to check on a population of Phacelia hastata, before arriving at the intended collection point. Strangely enough, we did not easily see the wispy fruits made by Geum triflorum and got out of the truck to inspect closer – in case they were blending in with the other plants in the area. On closer inspection, there were not nearly as many of the plants as we had seen when the population was first noted.  Looking around the area, we realized that this location had been destroyed by grazing cattle based on the many cow patties around the area. We also noticed that the other side of a nearby fence was far more lush  than the area around the pond – evidently the cows had not crossed to that side. Because of this, we decided to adapt our plan and move further down the road looking out for Geum triflorum outside of the intended collection point as well as checking on a Frasera speciosa (Green Gentian) population that we had recorded before. 

Soon enough, we reached a scouting point we had made for Frasera speciosa and the population was perfect! The fruit pods were dried up and each fruit was full of mature seeds. Then we each armed ourselves with double-bagged paper bags and started collecting Frasera speciosa seeds. Each of us had our own preferred methods – either picking off the entire dried up fruits filled with seeds, sitting by a plant and dumping out the seeds, or bending over the top half of the plant into the bag and letting the seeds fall out with a few shakes. We continued for a couple hours before returning to the truck for lunch and then moved down the road a little more where we saw a moderate, ready to harvest, population  of Geum triflorum too! To get both species at the same time, I tied two double-bagged paper bags to my belt, one for Frasera and the other for the Geum, and continued to collect both species for a few more hours – moving down the road just once more. A couple of us had earbuds in and were listening to music or podcasts while collecting and, since I had forgotten my own earbuds, I listened to the fire team talking over the forest service radio. At one point the clouds looked pretty ominous,but luckily they passed over us without any droplets and the rest of the time went well. 

After returning to the station, we weighed each bag in order to calculate how many seeds we collected and set the seeds in a container with a no-bug strip for the weekend. After doing some math, we figured we collected about 50,000 viable Geum triflorum seeds and about 70,000 viable Frasera speciosa seeds on this one trip!

This was just the third day of actually collecting seeds for me, and I was happy with how it went! It was a little sad that the original location we planned to collect from had been destroyed, but sometimes things happen and we have to be able to adapt. So many things can prevent seed collection – from cows eating and trampling over the plants, missing the sometimes short fruiting times, a lack of fruiting (as we have seen so far with Frageria virginiana (virginia strawberry) and Berberis repens (creeping oregon-grape)), or the abundance of invasive species causing us to not be able to collect in an area. Even so, we were successful in still collecting the planned species as well as another in the same area and are hoping to switch over to mostly making collections for the rest of the season!

Clouds come and go, but the mountains remain. The dew point temperature in the morning is typically always reached here with the cooler mornings. The increased condensation in the atmosphere makes the mountains invisible, as the surrounding clouds block your view for miles. But now that we’ve finally had 70 degree days up here, the warming temperature deviates from the dew point temperature, and all the clouds evaporate to leave a stunning view. This is one of the best ways to experience the Alaskan alpine hikes, almost as if mother nature is revealing a secret to you.

These have been my favorite places to go on the Chugach, although the flowers are still barely emerging. As my eyes scan across the land, surprisingly it is the smallest plants that catch my attention. Drosera angelica, the English Sundew, is inconspicuously about 5 cm tall and found in most peatbogs in Southcentral Alaska. This interesting character is a carnivorous plant, that uses leaves covered in red mucilaginous glands with a resin tip to lure in their prey. Once the unlucky insect is trapped, the tentacle like structures then bend toward the prey and center of the leaf to maximize contact. This unique adaptation is a survival technique to live in nitrogen deficient areas, such as bogs.

Another plant we had to get down on our hands and knees to search for is the rare Aphragmus eschscholtzianus, or Aleutian Cress. This mustard is so small, it was first described in the last 75 years. One of the terrestrial crew’s projects is to monitor the subalpine valleys saturated with snowmelt to observe long-term population change. This involves going to previously mapped plots, finding due north and due east from a monument stake, measuring a 5×4 m plot, and using quadrats to measure Aleutian Cress abundance in a given area of the plot. This work also involved traversing the hillslopes off trail to ideal habitat areas to find new populations. At first I hated it, as this work is like finding a needle in a very large haystack. After hiking all day, our crew finally found a population of about 5, giving us all a euphoria and sense of accomplishment. I thought I could rule out rare plant monitoring from my career goals but instead, this experience has only made me more indecisive.

“What are they looking at? They’re botanists! They should be looking at the ground!”

The botanists in question were standing on the summit of Mt. Jefferson, where we would be conducting an alpine vegetation survey for the Idaho Peaks Project. We had already seen a great amount of diversity on the four mile approach to our survey site; we passed Phacelia sericea, a relative of one of our target species (Phacelia hastata), Frasera speciosa, and a thriving population of Erythronium grandiflorum, which Alex and I were very excited to see.

One forb stood out from the rest during our hike to the alpine zone: Castilleja puberula. This species of Indian paintbrush is not only beautiful, but it is a rare species endemic to alpine zones along the Continental Divide and had previously only been sighted in Colorado and Montana.

This plant is especially interesting because of its relationship with surrounding individuals. Plants in the Castilleja genus are root hemi-parasites, meaning that they obtain water and mineral nutrients from a host plant using a specialized root called a haustorium. This structure connects the Castilleja to its host like a kind of suction cup and produce digestive enzymes to siphon away essential nutrients and water from the host. This evolutionary strategy has proven very effective: research done on eleven different species has shown that plants growing parasitically reach greater heights, show greater branching, and flower earlier in the year than non-parasitizing plants of the same species. But the benefits of this parasitism is not restricted to the Castilleja alone. When Castilleja target the dominant plant in an area, reducing its fitness, it opens up an opportunity for more plant species to move in, increasing the biodiversity of the whole area. The relationship between Castilleja and its host plant impacts the whole ecosystem.

As we move higher in elevation and closer to the timberline, we meet another noteworthy plant: Pinus albicaulis, or Whitebark Pine. Like Castilleja puberula, Whitebark Pine is one half of a fascinating symbiotic relationship.

Unlike most conifers, Whitebark Pine has indehiscent cones, so even when the seeds are ripe, the cones do not open to disperse the seeds. Why would a tree evolve to its seed stuck in a cone, completely inaccessible for reproduction?

Clark’s Nutcracker is the answer to this ecological mystery. It uses its shark beak to break open the hard scales of the pinecones and stores up to 150 of Whitebark Pine’s nutrient dense seeds in a sublingual pouch. The birds will then create seed caches of three to five seeds, typically in disturbed or open areas like a recent burn, burying them a few inches deep in the soil. Each year, an individual Clark’s Nutcracker can cache up to 100,000 seeds and rely on their amazing memory for finding their caches again later in the year- they will return to approximately 60% of their seed banks! The caches that are not returned to, and that survive predation by groundhogs and other scavengers, will germinate and grow into saplings in the years following their being planted.

Whitebark Pine populations rely on Clark’s Nutcrackers as the only animal to disperse their seed. As WBP faces increasing pressure from threats like blister rust and beetle infestation, their relationship with Clark’s Nutcracker is more important than ever. As a keystone species, they are crucial members of Idaho’s ecosystems, providing nutrition for countless species of wildlife as well as soil stabilization and runoff regulation. Conserving both species is essential for the protection of western ecosystems from irreversible changes.

Our journey up Mt. Jefferson gave us an invaluable look into the diverse and beautiful plant communities present in southeastern Idaho and the wildlife species that they rely on and serve. Working with several experienced botanists to complete an intensive botanical alpine survey and help fill gaps in our understanding of alpine plant communities and Idaho’s rare plants was an immensely rewarding opportunity and, although I didn’t think it was possible, I came out of the experience with an even greater love for the wildflowers we are working to conserve every day.

-az

In July, I learned a new meaning of heat. I read an article that stated that July in 2023 was the hottest month in recorded history, and that was absolutely the case here in Moab, Utah. Nevertheless, it was an exciting month full of new knowledge, birthdays (me and Mattie both celebrated July birthdays!), and new seeds to collect.

We wrapped up collecting our first target species, Hedysarum boreale, with a collection of over 300,000 seeds! We are now collecting our second target species, Heterotheca villosa, common name: hairy false goldenaster. This member of the asteraceae family produces small, yellow flowers with a center disk that produces a dark seed with fluffy, white hairs coming out from it that make it a lot of fun to collect. Since the seeds are much smaller and lighter than the last seeds we collected, it was fun to see how many more seeds we could fit in each paper bag for this species! It is quite satisfying to pinch the little puffballs of seed and see how many you can get per pinch.

Aside from our successes in seed collection, we also got to spend time with the hydrology team here working on a big fencing project at Medicine Lake in the La Sal Mountains. The fence that we helped to build will protect a wetland that has been harmed by hummocking by cattle. This project had so many different aspects that I got to be involved with and I learned so much! We built approximately half of the fence with barbed wire, T posts, and wooden stays and the other half was log worm fence reinforced with rebar.

My favorite aspect of this project was building beaver dam analogs, or BDAs. Essentially, a BDA is used to function in the same way that a beaver dam would, except that it is manmade. We constructed our BDAs using small aspen logs that get pounded vertically into the water channel, and many willow branches that get weaved in between each aspen log, much like weaving a basket. The goal of the BDAs in this project is to raise the water table in the wetland. We already noticed the water rising and spreading to different areas of the wetland from one day to the next which was super satisfying and made all the hard work worthwhile.

July has been incredible and filled with so many new experiences, and I can’t wait to see what August in Moab has in store for me. 🙂

July has been a BUSY month! With seed collection beginning, backpacking trips, birthdays, and National Park visits, I feel overwhelmed with information, news, and experiences.

Nolan and I were finally able to start collecting seed here in the Umpqua (YAY). From the tiny farewell to spring (Clarkia amoena) and bluehead gilia (Gilia capitata) that required hours of crawling on hands and knees to the elongated pea ponds of slender goldenbanner (Thermopsis gracilis), we’ve collected roughly pounds of seed with much more to go!

The Diamond Lake botany crew met up with trail and botany crews from a neighboring district to tackle non-native invasive species in a wilderness area of the Forest. Our trip was a 4 day backpacking trip to Fish Lake. While there we treated hundreds of canada thistle along with himalayan blackberry. Between the two botany crews, I think I was in the running for most miles hiked- around 22 miles (give or take). This was my first backpacking trip and overall I very much enjoyed the experience!

This month I also turned 25! I spent my birthday visiting Crater Lake National Park – potentially my favorite Oregon destination… I started with a nice sunrise hike up the Watchman Peak Trail. My love for Crater Lake stems greatly from the large of amount of White Bark Pines that I can see there. While on my sunrise hike, I saw a great number of the pines and even noticed a few pheromone packets nailed to the trees. These packets are used as a short-term treatment to protect individual pine trees from mountain pine beetle attack. These beetles naturally produce pheromones that disperse other beetles away from colonized trees. AKA the patch you see in the photo above communicates to the mountain pine beetle that this tree has no vacancy, protecting it from colonization. Happy to see the efforts being made to protect these special trees!