Summer Smoke and Plant Adventures

You can smell that summer is officially here in Central Oregon due to the smoke in the air. A blitzkrieg of dry lightning enveloped the area last week and more is expected in the upcoming week. On the bright side, I find the fires really bring home the point of how important the Seeds of Success program is. For many of the seeds collected restore these scorched areas throughout the West. As of now our Seeds of Success collections sites are yet to be affected by fire and hopefully that will continue to be the case.
As summer continues we are traveling to higher altitudes to continue to collect forb species. Today we went to check on Crepis acuminata but unfortunately 80% of the seed was attacked by some sort of pathogen so the entire collection had to be cancelled. Nonetheless it was still a productive day for on the way back down we pulled up the noxious spotted knapweed.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I am monitoring the rare plant Thelypodium eucosmum which has overall been successful, adventurous, and personally meaningful. Hiking through narrow canyons to study disturbance, ecology, and population dynamics of this plant involves a strong physique and detailed notes to assess the site. Many sites had not been seen for decades and at times have had surprising results. For example, one site that had not been visited since the 1980’s only had 20 plants but nowadays has over 300 plants! Another site unfortunately only had four individuals this year. This field work will hopefully bring to light which areas need to be fenced off from cows and perhaps lead to other conclusions such as juniper removal. Overall I hope the species will continue to be around in the following decades due to my field work.