I went for a run the other day down a trail that goes along the fence line of the local strawberry fields.  People were out harvesting the berries, slowly walking down the rows of plants picking as they went.  As I watched, mentally savoring the taste of fresh ripe strawberries, the realization came to me that my job and the berry harvester’s job were quite similar, aside for a few minor differences.  The strawberry fields are neat organized homogeneous rows of plants that are planted at specific times of the year so their phenology runs in time with the climate of the area, at the time we call strawberry season.  The plants we collect seeds from are naturally established scattered throughout the ecosystem according to various seed dispersal methods.  The plants are required to comply with the forces of natural selection, or just darn luck, for the seed to become established, germinate, grow to maturity, flower, and produce seed.   Sometimes you have to do a bit of searching to find the next plant, luckily in the desert you just have to stand in one place and let your eyes do the wandering until they find the correct shape/color of the plant you’re collecting from.  The strawberry collectors get to collect large tasty fruits into their buckets, although I’m sure their work regulations don’t allow snacking on the produce while on the job, it must be delightful to think of all the possible uses the strawberry consumers may indulge in.  We don’t get to snack on the seeds we collect either, but we can think of the future uses of the seed; the SOS Seed Bank, various garden experiments, and restoration projects.  Our seeds aren’t always as easy to collect as the strawberries.  Some seeds are small and need to be picked one at a time, some are bunched together and can be tapped into a bucket, others have pappuses that threaten to blow away the moment you touch them, and some are prickly and require gloves.  Some collections are quick and it’s easy to get 10,000 seeds, others require multiple visits and additional hours to meet the quota.  As with the strawberries, our seeds can be subject to predation, leaving us to collect empty seed cases.

Ambrosia dumosa (burro-bush) seeds

Dendromecon rigida (bush poppy) seeds

Seeds from Encelia farinosa (brittlebush)

Harvesting food and materials has been an element of human survival for all of time.   Our modern society is largely disconnected with the act of harvesting, and when we do take part in the process it is usually in a garden style setting.  Participating in the SOS seed collections draws out the inherent, yet often submerged, connection between human and environment.

Sarah Brewster

Escondido, CA

San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research