Greetings!
It’s been a little while since I’ve posted – this is actually the first time I’ve opened up my computer in over 2 weeks. The NEWFS team has been out and about making collections as summer comes to a close. With fall moving in, we are getting closer to our goal of 200+ collections for the 2015 season. As of today we are at ~130 collections. I think today was the slimiest collection yet: Peltandra virginica (Arrow Arum). Check out the image below to see where it grows and what it looks like.
Peltandra virginica. Image from Wikicommons.
Recently we’ve been focusing on salt marsh species such as Spartina alterniflora, Distichlis spicata, Limonium carolinianum, and Iva frutescens. So far, my favorite is Iva frutescens. My fellow interns call me the “Iva Queen” because I try to collect as much as possible since it grows in robust populations along the edge of salt marshes. It’s quite satisfying to haul in 5 or so bags full of Iva fruit compared to some of the other species we collect. One mistake we made recently was not checking the tides before venturing out to the salt marshes in CT and RI earlier this week. With the recent Blood Moon, the tides were especially high and prevented us from being able to collect Spartina alterniflora and other salt marsh species.
One thing I have been appreciating lately is the cooling of temperatures. Although we still had some higher temperatures earlier this week, I think we are finally settling into some fall weather, which is my favorite. Wearing rain boots in 80+ degree weather was starting to get old (and smelly!).
Yesterday we took advantage of torrential rains in New England to finally do some office work. We organized and re-labelled the majority of our collections to make sure everything was in order. We went over how to package our seed before shipping and discussed what has and hasn’t been successful in our seed collections. It was great to realize that there were only a few mistakes out of the hundreds of seed collections we had between all of us. We have made so many collections just in the past month that I really wasn’t sure how everything kept organized! Garden at the Woods doesn’t have that much room for us, so the seed collections have been divided up between the interns for safe keeping until shipping.
Yet again I must comment on how quickly this internship is flying by! With so much travel and keeping so busy on the weekends, it seems nearly impossible that we are getting so close to our season end goals. I am so appreciative of all the knowledge I’ve gained and the relationships I have developed between the other interns and our supervisor. We have made plenty of mistakes (forgetting pens or newspaper or data sheets or rulers or you name it!), but from these mistakes we’ve become a closer and more efficient team. We can move quickly between landscapes and scout for seed and make decisions as a team, which takes a while to feel comfortable with!
I’ll be back with more comments about Seeds of Success very soon, with the weather cooling down I become more reflective and take more time to consider all of the events of the past summer and all of the collections we’ve made and why these seeds are so important. Hopefully this most recent Hurricane Joaquin will not be so destructive to the east coast as Superstorm Sandy was!
Best wishes!
Anna