Astragalus ceramicus at the Sandhills in Centennial Valley
Lots has been happening here in Dillon and the internship is going quite well. My mentor and I have made eight collections for SOS already. I love Montana and often find myself in awe of the immense amount of open spaces and wildlife Montana has to offer. I even took to liking country music, mostly the old stuff like Dolly Parton.
Cool mutation in this Aster — click on the photo & you’ll notice it’s conjoined twins.
Beside collecting for SOS I have been fortunate enough to participate in lots of different monitoring and projects. Last week my mentor and I helped the Nature Conservancy folks monitor a very unique system of Sand hills in Montana’s Centennial Valley. It’s one of these weird systems where disturbance, over-grazing and uprooting plants is a GOOD thing because it creates ‘blow-outs’.
Blow-outs are basically exposed hills of sand. It’s best if there’s not a lot of grass stabilizing the blow-outs, because several sensitive plant species and insects thrive on the disturbance the moving sand creates.The BLM and Nature Conservancy are closely monitoring the sand hills using fire, over-grazing, and other techniques to keep the disturbance rate high. When we were there we monitored the frequency of bunch grass, rhizomatous grass, and a scruff pea. A Nature Conservancy fellow and myself got in a bit of a skirmish about the pronunciation of ‘rhizomatous’. He said ‘rhizomanous’ and I said ‘rhizomatous’. We eventually came to the conclusion ‘tomato’ ‘tomahto’ although according to google I am right. The endemic species in sand hill system were absolutely incredible. Especially stunning was this type of Astragalus specialized to live in the sand hills called Astragalus ceramicus.
They look like little easter eggs hanging from stems with linear leaves– not your typical Astragalus.
Wetland Plant training with the Heritage Foundation
The photo above is from a very helpful riparian plant training along the Beaverhead River with the Heritage Foundation.
Most recently I went to an amazing training on Moonworts.
Moonworts, also known as Botrychium, are plants from before the dinosaurs related to the ferns. The dust from their spores is said to have powers to make people invisible. The entire plant family of moonworts was largely forgotten until the 1980’s when University of Michigan biologists Herb and Florence Wagner dedicated roughly ten years to looking for them. They are mostly found in moist meadows of the Rocky Mountains. Their chloroplasts are like our appendix…. inactive. They get all the need from fungus and the entire plant is considered one leaf. The Forest Service had a training with Moonwort Specialist Steve Popovich and I was honored to participate.
Best,
L.G.M.