Hello friends. This is my last post about my CLM internship 2014. Since the last one many things have happened and there is a lot to tell, share, and express this time. October and November both were super busy with wrapping things up and still having SOS program running. Primarily because of Great Basin vegetation peculiarities, a big part of native species actually seed out in middle and late autumn, which happen to be our last months here. We all managed it well, with a team of eight people we were able to accomplish a lot. Eventually we’ve made way more collections than the average number of collections since 2004. Unfortunately we, as probably all SOS teams, didn’t get any feedback right away.  But of course we hope that all our collections are of a good quality and will be useful for many-many purposes.

With all trips that we made for seed collection we also had to prepare an annual report, just as the whole field office does, about our time being here, what we’ve done and what we could have done better – sort of an overview of 2014 program. It was fun and interesting.  We really felt like part of a field office team and that we played an important part in the office’s life. It was a funny period of time, when you have a few weeks to go but there is a ton of ideas where to go, what to collect, what is the most important to do and so on… It is certainly sad, that we didn’t get to do everything that we thought about, but at the same time it is good to stop and move on. There is always something that you lack time for or would like to have “just a week more”, so it is a good idea to stop at some point having a little bit of time to wrap things up.

In general, it has been an incredible time. This was my first summer our in the west and I must say that it was incredible. From the very beginning of my time here I felt like this part of the world is unique and being a botanist here is just a lucky occurrence for myself. And regardless of the fact that we all have learned a solid number of species and biology of local flora, you never feel like it is enough. The nature is so diverse, the transition between Great Basin and the Sierras is indeed incredible. These two huge ecoregions for botanists provide something unknown and interesting every time you are outside. Our team spent truly a lot of time in the field and it is one of the things that I’m very grateful for. Overall it was a great experience with exceptionally bright and positive moments and I know that such memories I will never loose. Again, we had a wonderful team in Carson City and I’m thankful for the work shared fun time spent together to all my friends – Alex, Andrew, Ari, Mary, Ethan, Laura, and Rebecca. Special thanks of course to Dean – our mentor for whom it was not easy to manage such a big team but turned out really well – I’m very glad that that I was part of CLM 2014 Carson City botany team.

Andrii

Beautiful Great Basin (Boundary Peak on the horizon)