Erythranthe carsonensis

It’s been an eventful month for the team and I here in Carson City, NV.  We began the month by traveling to Boise, ID for pesticide certification. It was basically like taking a super condensed college course, then having several finals at the end of the week. It was a challenge, but the whole team passed the general pesticide exam, as well as all of the category exams. We are straight up pesticide certified, so don’t mess with us!  We also did a couple of outreach events. We helped organize the Truckee River Environmental Education event on Earth Day. We took the kids on a botany safari and organized a game that taught the kids about noxious weeds. We also had a BLM booth at Earth Day in Reno, which a lot of families enjoyed.  Our booth had free posters, tattoos, homemade plant pressed book marks, as well as a couple games which included ecosystem jenga (super fun!) and the trash game, where the players had to guess how long it took certain everyday trash items to degrade.  Reno Earth Day was pretty neat, I got a chance to walk around a little bit and check out the vendors, food, and live music.

My favorite project we have been working on this month is rare plant monitoring.  We have been surveying for both Ivesia webberi and Erythranthe carsonesis.  We have successfully mapped several polygons of the Ivesei, and have been attempting to survey elsewhere for the plant. It’s been kind of a treasure hunt! We only spent a day surveying for the Erythranthe carsonesis, but it is a very unique looking plant, characterized by a yellow flower with a tiny red dot. We did find a few very small populations, a couple of them only have two or three individuals. Many plants are in bloom right now, so I expect lots of seed collecting on the horizon…