Time is flying here in Farmington, New Mexico mostly due to all the seed collections we have been making lately! The summer monsoon was just strong enough in the region south of Farmington to allow many of the forbs and grasses to seed out, which has created lots of field work for us.

One of my favorite collections was a globe mallow (Sphaeralcea), a common genus down here in the southwest desert. The plants in the patch we were collecting from looked very different from one another. This led us to believe that there were a number of different species growing in close proximity. Some had long narrow leaves, some had shorter fatter leaves and the flowers were ranging from bright orange to dark purple. This didn’t become apparent until we were in the middle of our collection process and we were thinking we would have to ship out a premade seed mix.

However, after much deliberation and advice from our mentor, Sheila Williams, we were able to figure out that it was Sphaeralcia emoryi, a species with alot of natural variation.

Sphaeralcea emoryi

Hopefully the frost holds off long enough for a few more collections!