As a native seed collector for the Seeds of Success program, you get to know some plants quite well. This past week was spent developing a love-hate relationship with Needle-And-Thread grass (Hesperostipa comate). At first glance, it’s a pretty cool looking plant. The 4-5 inch long awns attached to each seed sway gently in the breeze, which makes fields of the tufted bunchgrass rather aesthetically pleasing. Plus, the point of the seed is sharp, (hence the name) allowing one to attach the seeds to your hat (because why not?).
Unfortunately, the plants start to lose their attractiveness when you need to collect 10,000 seeds from them. Each seed head probably contained an average of only three viable seeds which meant we needed to collect somewhere near 3,400 inflorescences. And that’s the minimum. Simply cutting the heads gave us too much plant matter so we had to extract each seed individually.
On our first collection attempt we tried doing this in the field, grabbing the awns to pluck them from the inflorescence. If we were lucky, we could grab a few at a time, but too often we had to pick them up one by one. This experience was further enhanced by the resident flies and ticks seeking to feast on our blood as we worked. Personally, I found that rather inconsiderate of them since the whole point of the SOS program is to restore and maintain their ecosystem. After about six hours of this, my coworker and I estimated we had only been able to collect about 3,000 seeds. Ugh.
The next day we revised our strategy by cutting the heads and bringing them back to the lab to clean by hand. This strategy afforded us the ability to avoid involuntary blood donations, bask in the comforts of air conditioning, and even listen to music to dull the tedium of plucking out thousands of seeds from their heads. While this doesn’t make for a very exciting work day, it does become strangely addicting, so the hours tend to roll by pretty quickly.
How I spend my free time…
While the desert may leave something to be desired in terms of stunning beauty, I at least get to work within driving distance of some more classically picturesque areas. And considering that I’m currently being consumed by an unquenchable addiction to photography, that suits me just fine.