During my time in the Umpqua, I have learned a lot about the nature of seed and seed collection. As something that I had never really given much thought to before, I have picked up on quite a few things regarding the matter. Though not extensive or something that can possibly be used across the board, I caught myself this last month making a mental rule book for the dos and don’ts of seed collection. Noting the things that nature had to teach me, I learned along the way what was easiest, the best, or sometimes the worst way to go about a process.

1. Never force seed. One thing that has stuck out to me the most, and should perhaps have been the most obvious idea, is that that seed will freely give itself to you when it is ready. It’s the whole purpose and the thing it wants to do the most – be released in its time of maturity. So when walking up to a plant, I now take note of how easily the seed gives itself up to me. Do I have to force it off of the plant? Or if I move too quick, accidentally bumping the plant, am I in trouble of losing my collection because it has sprung away at the smallest of encounters. If so, chances are I can pass go and collect my $200… after a trusty cut test of course.

// note – I wouldn’t necessarily think of berries and fruits in this way.

2. Following that thought, I move on to lesson number two: Be careful where you tread and grab. The number of times that I have lost the seed that I was reaching for simply because I moved too quick, missing what I was reaching for or accidentally bumped a plant with my leg… embarrassing. Springy seed pods, such as the Aquilegia formosa, will have you flying seed halfway across your work area with the smallest of movements. While not all seed is positioned for a great launching, those that are require patience and precise work – and maybe a little less shaking from drinking too much coffee in the morning.

3. Avoid spiderwebs. Not necessarily a hill I’m willing to die on, but I can think of a few reasons to avoid spiderwebs. First, because of spiders, duh. The last thing I want to do is reach for a handful of material and have a spider or its web in my hand. Yuck. I don’t like it. I don’t want it. No thanks. Second, webs catch things. Mostly bugs, but sometimes other things too like seeds. Here in the Umpqua, one of our most treated non-native invasive species has a wispy seed comparable to that of a dandelion. There have been a few times that I have noticed these fluffy seeds caught in a spider’s web. For me, collecting spider webs full of other, perhaps unfriendly seeds is not worth it so I avoid it altogether.

4. South facing vs. north facing. Thanks to rocking climbing I knew that any rock, bluff, or thing facing south would be hotter than the north, and as a result, knew that any seed facing south would be ready for harvesting first (ignoring elevation). This is because the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the south side of any object will see the most hours of sunlight in a day.

5. Work in designated lines. When working in groups, it is important to assign work areas within your collection site. I have found that working in transects works best. This allows for all areas to be covered. No accidentally missing plants. No double-picking. You are responsible for an area – you know where you began, you know where you stopped, you know how much you’ve collected.

Honorable Mentions

Don’t be greedy. Take your percentage, leave the rest, and trust that Nature will provide everything you are meant to take.

Don’t cry over spilled seed. Seed spilled in the wild isn’t really lost or wasted. It’s where it was originally meant to be.

Patient work, not speedy. Small collection species are tedious and require a lot of effort. Don’t give up on collecting early because it’s uncomfortable. Pay your dues. Take the time to do the work. Tomorrow’s collection species will probably be easier.

Walk around. Find the beginning or the end of a population to begin your work. Don’t start in the middle and make yourself all confused. Additionally, you might find something new that you missed before.

-Casey Mills

Awn the subject of grasses I have very little to say because I know very little. Much of my work this past month has been IDing grasses during plant surveys. This is difficult because all grasses look the same to me. To aid in grass identification I made the following dichotomous key: 

1. Does it look like a brome?
   1. Yeah- 2
   1. No- 3
2. Is it a brome?
   1. Yeah- Bromus sp.
   1. No- Festuca sp.  
3. Could you use it to tickle someone? 
   1. Easily- Agrostis sp.
   1. Would be a challenge- 4
4. One seed per spikelet? 
   1. Yeah- Poa sp.
   1. No- 5
5. Hairy leaf margins?
   1. Yeah- Calamagrostis sp.
   1. No- 6
6. Does it grow in a wet area?
   1. Yeah- 7
   1. No- 14
7. Does it look kind of stringy?
   1. Yeah- 8
   1. No- 9
8. Seeds rotund?
   1. Yeah- Glyceria sp.
   1. No- Cinna latifolia  
9. Awns?
   1. Yeah- 10
   1. No- Phalaris arundinacea
10. Looks like a corndog?
    1. Yeah- 11
    1. No- 12
11. Describe the corndog
    1. Short and fat- Phleum pratense
    1. Long and skinny- Alopecurus aequalis
12. Poofy?
    1. Yeah- Dactylis glomerata
    1. No- 13
13. Droopy?
    1. Yeah- Deschampsia elongata
    1. No- Elymus glaucus
14. Bulbed?
    1. Yeah- Melica bulbosa
    1. No- 15
15. Spikelets on opposite sides of the stem?
    1. Yeah- 16
    1. No- 17
16. Bunchgrass?
    1. Yeah- Pseudoroegneria spicata
    1. No- Thinopyrum intermedium
17. Unkempt look?
    1. Yeah- Hordeum jubatum
    1. No- 18
18. Comb-like?
    1. Yeah- Agropyon cristatum
    1. No- 19
19. Poofy?
    1. Yeah- Koeleria macrantha
    1. No- Eriocoma nelsonii

When da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa he described the feeling of a divine presence guiding every brushstroke.¹ Making this key felt sort of the same way. 

In the key I did not key many genera down to species-level because I feel that keying a grass down to genus-level often times suffices. Anything else just feels pretentious. I especially feel this way with the genus “Bromus”. I am of the correct opinion that, in an effort to make our jobs easier, all bromes should be combined into one species (the unibrome). 

Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) is a noxious weed invasive in much of the Western United States. But, there are a number of brome “species” already native to this area. If we combined all the bromes into one species then cheatgrass would no longer be invasive and we will save a lot of money by no longer needing to invest time and resources on invasive management for this species. As an added benefit, mountain brome (Bromus sitchensis) is one of the target seed collection species for myself and my co-intern. We are having some difficulty locating suitable populations for this species, but if mountain brome and cheatgrass get combined into one species then we could just collect cheatgrass seeds. This would save us a lot of time because the cheatgrass is everywhere, even in disturbed environments where you would expect to see mainly invasive species. I suspect the reason plant taxonomists have not thought of these changes is because they are cowards. Unfortunately, there is not a Nobel Prize in biology.

1 I made this up

Our sylvan saunter sojourning for seeds has scattered us scouts though streamsides, summits, swamps, steppes and ski slopes. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of driving up and down many a bumpy dirt road, hunting far-flung patches of plants and filling bag after bag with countless thousands of seeds. Our basement is starting to be overrun with an ever-growing tower of brown paper bags with eerie-sounding Latin labels – are we botanists or Hogwarts wizards?
Our wide-ranging adventures over two national forests mean that we’ve been camping almost every week this month to cover enough ground. After the first few days of eating only hot dogs and peanut butter sandwiches, I shifted gears and decided that if I was going to do all this camp cooking this summer, I was going to do it right. I like a good camp-cooked meal as much as anyone, so it’s a good thing I have a job that makes me hike a lot.

With enough determination, one can cook (almost) anything over a campfire or a single-burner stove that can be made at home. On one such adventure, I spent an evening frying Monte Cristo sandwiches over a campfire – a delicious combination of ham and cheese between French toast, drizzled with pancake syrup. For dessert, I wrapped two Pillsbury crescent rolls around a stick, fried them over a fire, and filled the resulting tube with pudding and whipped cream for an eclair that would make any French chef proud. .I followed it up the next two nights with French toast and a recipe from the original 1911 edition of the Boy Scout Handbook for Canned Salmon on Toast, essentially a glorified if archaic tuna salad. The recipe begins, “Dip slices of stale bread into smoking hot lard.” I’d call the result mediocre at best, with a pallid gray color unbecoming of salmon, but nothing tasted better after a long day of hiking (especially when I followed it with a round of French toast for dessert). The next week, I went out on a limb and tried a recipe for spicy potato and leek soup with shrimp that originally came out of an old fantasy book I read in middle school. It took near the entire evening to simmer over our campfire but boy, it sure tasted good! On the contrary, the recipe feeds about four people – being only Dan and myself, we awkwardly taped the pot lid closed and set it in the trunk of our jeep. The next morning, Dan was souped out, leaving me staring down a very large breakfast of seemingly endless shrimp. If you’re going to cook enough to have leftovers the next morning, make sure you have someone who will actually eat them!