Life has been hectic starting this internship with CLM, but good. I am stationed in Denver, Colorado at the state office with Carol Dawson, a wonderful person who is able to get way more done than is humanly possible, and Peter Gordon, a great guy from Australia who is very helpful, fun to chat with, and was an intern through this program himself before joining Carol. Right away, we were off and running with important things to do, from being briefed about what we are doing, setting up at the office, and prepping for our first adventures.
Our first two weeks we focused on monitoring rare plants, Penstemon harringtonii and Sclarocactus glaucus, but will not go into detail about it, as you can read about it from my co-intern, Sama, who posted about it last week. The third week was busy with training in Chicago, where we met all the other interns stationed across the western states, met many of the people behind the scenes of this program, and taught many skills and information needed for most of the internships. This current week, we have performed our other half of our duties, Seeds of Success (SOS).
an opening on the foothills showing the possible seeds we might collect later this year
Opuntia polyacantha - aka prickly pear species in bloom
Our current objective for SOS is to scout out new or old potential locations for common plants that are great for restoration and to collect plant genetic diversity for the security of our future. During our scouting endeavors, Peter takes to time to teach us how to identify plant families (such as the rose family, lily family, etc.), what the common plants are, and using a dichotomous key to figure out the plant species when we are working without him or Carol (such as keying out a prickly pear cactus species of Opuntia polyacantha). He also informs us on what to look for in the size of a population for seed collection, the difficulties of certain species
Geranium caespitosum - aka pineywoods geranium that disperses it's seeds if you touch it when ripe.
if the fruits pop open when touched, scattering the tiny black/brown seeds over 30 feet), and many other necessary procedures we must follow in order to make our collection more accurate and viable for storage (correct labeling, information needed recorded, etc.).
We have yet to collect seeds because it requires a lot of prep work now in order to find what has a large enough population to harvest, save time later and to prevent missed opportunities, and many of the plants are not in fruit yet. But, while investigating potential collections, a phenomenal bonus are all the spectacular landscapes, land formations, and flowers that we get to witness and admire. As Peter has mentioned as hikers and runners pass by us, that they took a day off from work just to be here while we are paid to work and enjoy the marvels of our Earth.
Peter within the area of Paint Mines where erosion is taking place.