Our pool of office seasonals has increased from two to five! Hector and I have been joined by two weed technicians, Lisa and Jabus, and a range technician, Daniel. Lisa and Jabus are also under my boss’s supervision so we spend quite a bit of time together. Although we don’t see Daniel as much, we’ve managed to coerce all three of them to help us collect seeds at one time or another.

My mentor had gone to Montana for two weeks of training, so work was a bit different. She left us with a nice list of projects to accomplish in her absence.  Hector and I spent a lot of time collecting seeds. The four of us (Hector, Lisa, Jabus, and myself) teamed up to scout Buck Canyon for Penstemon grahamii (Graham’s beardtongue) and Penstemon scarious var. albifluvis (White River beardtongue). I was grateful for the time I spent earlier this summer hunting for penstemon as I felt more confident independently identifying the white, shaley slope habitat the species prefers. It continues to boggle my mind, though, how important habitat is to species identification here in the Uinta Basin. I’ve never taken such slight habitat differences (e.g. shale color) into account before, only having previously been concerned with different biomes.

I found a whole hillside of fat cacti one day while scouting!

Our view as we scouted for Penstemon.

I’m not usually a negative person, but I have collected what I deem to officially be the worst plant to collect seeds from:  Hedysarum boreale (Utah sweetvetch). When we first scouted the population, we found a nice patch of beautiful, healthy plants with lots of purple flowers. When we returned to collect seeds, though, the nightmare began. Not only had something predated upon a lot of the big, healthy plants we had hoped to collect from, but the seed pods were covered in small, sharp spikes that wreaked havoc on fingers if you tried to pry the pod open to determine if the seed present was healthy.

Spiny seed pods of Hedysarum boreale.

This less than fun seed collection has been nicely counterbalanced, though, with what has probably been the easiest and fastest collection Hector and I have done so far. The two of us were checking out previously vouchered plant populations on Diamond Mountain when we discovered that our patch of Machaeranthera grindelioides (rayless tansyaster) was ripe for the picking! It was late in the afternoon and rather hot, but we decided to get as far as we could on collecting it that day and come back tomorrow if necessary. It took us 30 minutes to collect 10,000+ seeds. As it’s an aster, plucking M. grindelioides was akin to collecting dandelion puffs and each inflorescence yielded at least 20 seeds. It was great!

Our view from Diamond Mountain, looking toward Split Mountain and the Green River.

One of our last work days in June was spent completing ATV training. I was rather skeptical of the training at first as we were required to complete a 2-hour online course on ATV’s as well as read two packets of information and regulations which, to be honest, were rather dry. Actual ATV training, though, was fantastic! Although we were required to be dressed in pants, long sleeves, and helmets, the BLM shares an RV with other local government agencies and, as the Vernal Field Office had signed it out for the day, we were able to duck inside of its air conditioned confines during any textbook parts of training. The hands-on component was by far the most fun, though.  In high school, I worked for an agricultural crop consultant and it was my job to ride an ATV around farmers’ fields, documenting weeds and taking population counts. I loved riding an ATV, but most fields were pretty flat and boring. For our training, though, we had a course set up for us that included weaving, swerving, U-turns on a slope, and side slope traversing. The last session was a ride along with the instructor who took us over terrain we hadn’t been practicing on so it was a nice test of the skills we had just learned.

ATV training!

Hector, myself, Lisa, and Jabus in front of the RV.

The final blog-worthy experience I’ve had this past month was rafting down the Green River. I’ve been down the White River two times now and have camped both times, but one day on the Green River was definitely superior. The White River is rather murky and isolated while the Green is nearly crystal clear and much more popular. The “B section” of the Green River also boasts a bona-fide set of rapids so our botanical team was accompanied this time by two Forest Service river rangers and our office’s two Recreation guys who safely rafted us through the rocky rapids. Hector and I scouted for potential SOS collections while Lisa and Jabus surveyed the weedy spots.

Stay cool, fellow interns.

-Dani

Vernal BLM

We made friends with some wild horses.

Lovely cattle sitting on our road on top of Blue Mountain.

“None of Nature’s landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild.”

-John Muir