Greetings from Wyoming!

It is -12 degrees F as I write, and has not broken 10 degrees in three days. Kind of a nasty shock for this Southwest girl when I got back from Thanksgiving in Arizona! Needless to say, no more fieldwork for us. The last of the sage collections are in, the pressed plant specimens are off to the Smithsonian and the Rocky Mountain Herbarium, and I am wrapping up the SOS work for this year.

The biggest thing now is to make sure all the loose strings are wrapped up before I leave here. I’m trying to organize all the information we collected and put together some useful tips for the next person. I can tell that the intern before me tried to make things easier for the following year, and I would like to do the same if I can. Anything we can do to make the learning curve less steep. There are also some stray herbarium vouchers from years past that I will try to get documented and moved somewhere safe.

I spent some time talking with the folks at the Rocky Mountain Herbarium this week, and they have done detailed work over an impressive area of the Rocky Mountain West. Wyoming and the mountainous part of Colorado have been covered pretty thoroughly, and they are slowly working their way north. However, there are still blank spots on the map that could use some detailed botanizing. Something to keep in mind for the future.

Time is going way too fast!

Stay warm everybody!

Cheers,
Abby D.