The season is beginning to come to a close. Looking around the different field sites and local parks, I noticed that the aspen leaves are beginning to desiccate and produce the most brilliant, golden yellow and amazingly, beautiful orange hues. Even though the season is almost over, we are still very busy with collecting seeds, such as Chrysothamnus sp. populations, Mentzelia nuda (bractless blazingstar), and many other plant species that we have been scouting and monitoring all season long.
This has been an absolutely amazing opportunity. There are some very beautiful things happening in Colorado this time of year, and I am very excited and looking forward to experiencing winter sports and fall festival events in downtown Denver. Here are a few photos to show some of the events that have happened thus far.
One of our collections for the S.O.S. Program
During one of my favorite collections, Humulus lupulus. While out in the field collecting, we saw a garter snake (quite harmless).
Can you find the snake hidden in the grass?
Last week Sama (another CLM intern at the BLM Colorado State Office) finished her CLM internship. It was very sad to see her leave and its very different to see people move on to their new adventures. Truly, I think that I have made some great friendships through the CLM program and I know that I will stay in contact and remain friends with them even after the CLM Internship Program.
At Pine Valley Ranch Open Space Park, Sama and I together on her last day of the CLM internship.
I was able to spend time with other interns from different field offices in Colorado. At Anvil Points, we monitored the Penstemon debilis rare plant population, which lives in areas high in shale deposits on about a 5 degree slope that suddenly drops down into a valley. Its great being able to see Alison Gabrenya (Ali) again, we met at the CLM Workshop in Chicago and we have been great friends ever since then. For the day, I was able to show her exactly what we do at the Colorado State Office to study, monitor, and assess rare plant populations.
Spending the day with Ali Gabrenya and Christine Chung on a rare plant monitoring trip for Penstemon debilis at Anvil Points.
I’m looking forward to staying until the very end of this seed collection season and continuing to increase our numbers of plant species for the S.O.S. Program. I have learned so much from this wonderful opportunity and gained a large amount of confidence in identifying Colorado native plant species. Being a girl from Georgia, the flora and even fauna are vastly different in the south in comparison to the west. I’m excited to see what the month of November holds and the spectacular events happening throughout this beautiful state. I have fallen in love with Colorado and all of the friendly people here!
Happy Seed Collecting (because there are still thousands of seeds to continue to collect before the season is officially over).
Darnisha Coverson
BLM Colorado State Office