It’s the first week of October and my seasonal job with the Bureau of Land Management in Denver is getting towards its final stretch yet it is still just as busy. Rare plant monitoring finished last week and my co-worker and I are solely working on native seed collecting. We have also been handed the reins for making seed collections ourselves with occasional help in collecting if it is too time consuming for just the two of us to get enough seed. We have been given control over where to go, what to collect, and when

Penstemon unilateralis we collected at North Table Mountain Park

to collect the seeds and fill out all the needed information on the datasheet, take photo vouchers, and collect specimen vouchers for our collections. So far for this year, we have made about 20 collections (some easy, others more difficult that take more time) and are working towards making over 30 collections.

Penstemon unilateralis fruits we collected

Penstemon unilateralis seeds that we were after

A benefit for us working on Seeds of Success are the skill sets and being able to make our own decisions which will be great on our resume for future jobs. Sure, we continue going back to the same locations repeatedly and haven’t seen any new and awesome landscapes and plants from traveling for rare plant monitoring, but we do still get to enjoy being outside and have more contact with the public now. Some people stop by to ask what we are doing and continue with a few questions after that, find our work to be interesting and for a good cause. Well, six weeks left to go collecting seed.

A great view at North Table Mountain Park

This is Jeffrey at the Colorado BLM State Office in Denver, over and out.