I’m a second season CLMer now! I arrived in Prineville, OR almost a month ago to work on botany projects, especially weeds and seeds on the District. My mentor and fellow seasonals are great and I’m enjoying the change of scenery compared to last year. Central Oregon has a pretty diverse landscape, and the weather here is crazy. You’ve got to be prepared for anything from 35 degrees and snowing to pelting rain to 80 degrees and sunny, all in one field day. I’m learning how to use GIS, which will probably be one of my greatest learnig curves this season. I’m in the middle of lots of exciting trainings, and have already had much variety on the job. I took a workshop on bumble bee conservation that was absolutley fascinating. Did you know bumble bees are the only pollinators that can access the pollen of the Solanaceae? They vibrate at just the right frequency for pollen to come shooting out of those closed off anthers. Pretty cool stuff!

A bunch of the SOS teams of OR got together this week to do seed collectors training and tour the Bend Seed Extractory. It was informative to get the perspective of the receiving end of SOS and watch all the machines and x-raying in action. As the SOS collector in Prineville, I get to hand deliver all my material to Bend, so I will be seeing a lot of Kayla and Sara this summer. I will be getting an OR state pesticide applicator lisence so that I can help the weed crew take care of nasty post-fire invaders. We will also be conducting a lot of weed mapping on these fragile areas. There’s been some sensitive species monitoring that has taken me off the beaten path to some of the districts’ best kept secret beautiful locations, and I’m looking forward to meeting more of our sensitive plants. Last but far from least, I’ve started scouting for our seed collections and developing strategies for prioritizing those collections. This office is very involved in restoration projects and grow-out utilizing the seed that is collected, so it’s a bit different from last year where we focused more on long term conservation storage. I’m looking for important Sagegrouse habitat forbs, workhorse grass species, pollinator collections, and then the opportunistic stuff that happens at the right place and right time. Everything is blooming! So there’s lots of work to be done. It’s good to be back in the CLM family again! Pictures coming soon,

Hannah