Since the CLM workshop in Chicago, Jess and I have been quite busy!  Unfortunately during Chicago we lost a few of the populations which we had previously scouted out; the Hesperostipa comata and the Grayia spinosa had already matured and lost their seeds.  We have collected from 10 different populations so far.  We were skeptical at first about our ability to collect 10,000 seeds per population, but we have not had an issue.  We did an estimate on the number of seeds we collected for Cleome lutea using the weight of 100-500 seeds and then using the total collection weight; we estimated that we collected around 75,000 seeds.  We also did the weight estimate with our population of Eriogonum alatum which we only spent about 30 minutes collecting and each fruit only has one seed.  Amazingly, after that amount of time we estimated that we had already collected 4,500 seeds!

At first we were uncertain about the best method, but we quickly learned as we collected Acnatherum hymenoides. We thought the best method was to cut off the infructescence. However, by doing this we had to do a lot of manual cleaning by hand before sending the seeds off to Bend, OR.  Other interns informed us that stripping the seeds right away worked a lot better and resulted in little to no chaff, so we made sure to do this as best as we could for our other collections.

While most of our time since Chicago has been spent locating populations and collecting seeds, we have been able to do a couple other things to diversify our experience.  We went out with our herbicide guy and learned about a few of the different invasive species in our area.  We marked the plants for him so he was able to treat that area.  We also were trained on the methods of how to assess PFC (proper functioning condition) on streams.  Finally, we spent a week working with SWCA, an environmental consulting group, monitoring plots of Sclerocactus wetlandicus and S. brevispinus.

It has been a full month with lots of learning and adventures 🙂