Rain passing over us in a heavy cistern
Cardinal direction eastern
Yellow is the color of the young
Agoseris. Lomatium.
Digging them up like a Piaute or a Wasco
Roots clenched. Basalt flow.
Before I know it you’ll become crinkled ribbons
A brown remembrance given
And sent away into a manila envelope
Epithets. Scientific trope.
A memory
A reverberated chord of Big Sky Bend.
These first two weeks at the Prineville Field Office in Eastern Oregon has been full of wonderful conversations and lots of traditional botanizing. Herbarium presses, dissection scopes, floras and inside jokes are a plenty.
To top that off, we’ve received opportunities to go out in the field with various botanists and an archeologist. Some of the first plants to bloom are Lomatiums and bitter roots (Lewisia rediviva), and we collected these plants to give to the Warm Spring Reservation since their tubers and roots are a starch source. Bitter root can be eaten fresh and has a starchy yet floral taste, which we tried fresh from the field. The next day I tried one with flowers and found out first hand why it is called bitter root.
We also went out to monitor a rare species in the Pea Family called Astragalus diaphanous var. diurnus on the John Day River. They are found mostly on black dark volcanic soil in canyonlands jam-packed with geological and paleontological history. Interspersed between this BLM Land is John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, which I hope to visit soon.
Below are some pictures of this time out in the field, which included some mountain goat sighting!
Dried form is on the left and fresh form is on the right
Small hills (mimas) are naturally surrounded by perfectly outlined basalt rock.
In the south fork of the John Day River
Bureau of Land Management – Prineville Field Office