Hey Everyone 🙂

It’s been a while since I last posted…I’ll try to keep it short and sweet.

First off, out here in the sagebrush country…. every collection day is a treasure hunt. Pretty much everything here is a crispy critter. Sometimes we get lucky and are able to collect a neat population. Since my last post, we’ve done twelve more collections. We’ve collected:

Poa nevadaensis (Nevada bluegrass)

Bromus marginatus (Mountain brome)

Lomatium dissectum (Fernleaf biscuitroot)

Rosa woodsii (Wood’s rose)

Juncus balticus (Baltic rush)

Lomatium triternatum (Nineleaf biscuitroot)

Leymus cinereus (Basin wildrye)

Achillea millefolium (Common yarrow)

Calochortus macrocarpus (Sagebrush mariposa lily)

Potentilla gracilis (Slender cinquefoil)

Carex nebrascensis (Nebraska sedge)

Cercocarpus ledifolius (Curl-leaf mountain mahoghany)

We are still hoping to collect the sagebrush species later on in the season and hopefully meet our targets. Because of the drought, many of the perennial bunchgrass species are not fully seeded so it’s been pretty nerve wrecking to make sure we collect enough for our program.

While on the subject of treasure hunting, Amanda and I had a couple of opportunities to tag along with the Alturas interns (Jaileen & Nate) and their mentor Mike Dolan to conduct some rare plant surveys. It was pretty cool to learn that there is a penstemon species (Penstemon janishiae) that’s listed as rare and endangered. What we essentially did was walk around an area that has been cleared for a juniper fuel reduction project and do some final flagging around areas where the penstemon grew. I still find it intriguing that the soil composition can change so dramatically within a few feet of each other. No wonder our Mama Duck (Andrew) gets so excited digging soil pits.

Penstemon janishiae

Anywhoo…that’s all for now. I’ll be posting real soon this time..promise =P