I may sound bitter in this post, but something has really been bugging me lately.  What’s bugging me, you ask? The whole collection of bitterbrush seed I’ve harvested is infested with bugs!  Or maybe I should be upset that my bug collection is infested with bitterbrush seed, it’s hard to tell.  I spent several days this week, along with fellow CLM intern, Natalie, harvesting bitterbrush (Purshia tridentata) seed at different locations of the BLM Eagle Lake Field Office.  We have been monitoring these populations for over a month, waiting for the seeds to mature from a soft red seed into a dry black seed.  With the wait finally over, we went to work harvesting the seed.  Harvesting bitterbrush seed has been different than any of the other Seeds of Success collections we have done.  Instead of harvesting the seed by hand, it is more efficient to collect bitterbrush seed by placing a hopper (handmade by my mentor, Valda) under the bush, and smack the bush with a stick.  The seed then falls into the hopper along with some other plant matter, and to our dismay, thousands of large, black bugs.

Collecting bitterbrush seed

Most of the bugs that fell into the hopper were Say’s stink bugs (Chlorochroa sayi), although there were several different species of stink bugs being accidentally collected.  These bugs are pests, and feed on the bitterbrush seed by using their sucking mouth parts to extract the nutrients out of the seed.  The bugs were hard to notice when they were on the bitterbrush plants, but several fell into the hoppers every time we smacked the bushes.  Although the bugs could fly, most did not attempt to fly from the hoppers. There were so many bugs in the hoppers that it looked like the whole contents was moving.

Say’s stink bug

Knowing that we could not send the seed collection in to be cleaned in this state, we needed a way to get the bugs out of the seed.  We shoveled the seed into several paper shopping bags, and allowed them to sit overnight outside the BLM office building.  We returned in the morning to find bugs crawling all over the bags, the walls, and the sidewalk, as well as some disgusted coworkers.  We decided to move the bags to “The Yard”, the area where BLM keeps many of its vehicles and heavy machinery.  We left the bags there over the weekend, and returned on Monday to find most of the bugs gone.

Today we boxed up the seed (insect traps included, of course) and shipped it to the cleaning facility.  Hopefully enough of the seed is still healthy despite the infestation, and the Eagle Lake Field Office will get some bitterbrush seed back to use in fire rehabilitation.

Remember, fellow CLM interns: Just Say No to Bugs.

Sam

BLM

Eagle Lake Field Office