Summer is ending but with our the northwest rain forbs for Seeds of Success collections are still in bloom. In reality this is good for us since all botany staff were at conferences or training last week and unable to collect!

The conference I attended is one that most first year CLM interns attend. It’s hosted by the Chicago Botanical Garden and is a wonderful crash course in monitoring populations, learning about Seeds of Success, and receiving an overview in the BLM and the CLM program. One treat is that Dean Tonneda, a botanist at the Carson City BLM, shares his collection of Mono Lake tribal ethnobotany. After this lecture I was left with the idea that though many of our cultures have lost the knowledge of wild plants, that knowledge can be gained once again by going out into the forest and playing around with plant properties. For example, finding fiber properties is as easy as walking in the forest and tugging on plants. Ethnobotany is not extinct, it is just dormant.

Chicago Botanic Garden

One exciting project I am working on is with a rare plant called Thelypodium eucosmum. First I organized past monitoring data on the species and was alarmed by the rate at which the species is going extinct. No need for chi square graphs or R programming; simple math easily shows the progression of this species. For example, there were 2,000 individuals in 1980 and now there are 200. Then I chose the most sensitive populations to monitor and made an ArcGIS map. This week or the next we will be climbing the steep ravines near the John Day Fossil beds where these populations exist. Hopefully our work will provide the data to create range land contracts that help protect this species while giving ranchers the wide open space they need for their cows.

Thelypodium eucosmum

Debbie Pattison
Prineville Field Office, BLM