This past week and a half at the North Carolina Botanical Garden (NCBG) has been full of settling in. The four interns here include Lauren, Jake, Emily, and myself (Maggie), and we have just begun to get to know one another, as well as our site.

This week began with our NCBG Intern Orientation. Though our specific CLM project revolves around the Seeds of Success East Program, the four of us have also been learning so much about NCBG and its amazing conservation programs in addition to SOS East. During Orientation, we had the chance to tour all of the Garden’s properties, including an arboretum and herbarium on University of North Carolina’s campus as well as hiking trails at Battle Park. We were also taken on a guided tour of the Botanical Garden itself. One special highlight included touring NCBG’s carnivorous plants exhibit, where we had the chance to cut open dried pitcher plants and examine the exoskeletons of all the unlucky insects that found their demise in the plants’ digestive juices.

The always beautiful pitcher plants.

Mmm, tasty bugs! 

This week has also been full of research. Over the course of the summer, we will be collecting seeds from native plants located across the coastal plain ecoregion in North Carolina, Maryland, and Virginia. With that task at hand, we’ve focused thus far on familiarizing ourselves with the species we will be collecting from. Today, we spent several hours researching the plants and their defining characteristics. Luckily, we’ve already become new best friends with our favorite Weakley and Radford dichotomous keys! We have also been practicing the challenging art of identifying several species of grasses, rushes, and sedges, which we will collect seeds from in the field. They are tricky buggars to tell apart!

Dichotomous keys and species lists: what a good combo!

Getting to know Dicanthelium scoparium

Lauren, Emily, and our trusty leader and supervisor, Amanda, checking out some grasses.