Greetings again from North Carolina! The past couple weeks have been full of adventure for our Seeds of Success East crew. We got to try something new and collect seeds from a boat at the National Park Service’s Dyke Marsh Preserve outside of Washington D.C. As a large chunk of our target species are semi-aquatic, we have been longing to use a boat for collections for most of the season. We finally got our chance, and even had a captain to chauffeur us around in a motorboat. We worked with National Park Service staff to collect Fraxinus profunda, or pumpkin ash. The seeds of the ash will be banked in order to provide a genetic repository and a means of replanting after the devastating ash borer insect moves on out of the area. Brent Steury, a Natural Resources Program Manager from the Park Service who we worked with on this project, filled us in on the threat. The bugs seem to be just beginning to move into the area, but due to their exotic origins, the trees have little to no defense against them and almost 100% mortality is expected as they begin to prey on area ash populations. The future looks grim for these trees, but it was gratifying to know that we are working well ahead to ensure that the genetics will not be lost.
The crew wading around outside our collection boat at Dyke Marsh
During a quiet moment before the rain hit, we collected Polygonum arifolium in the surreal beauty of this baldcypress swamp at Pettigrew State Park in NC.
The week after that, we had to face the threat of Hurricane Joaquin! Most of the state of North Carolina was already expecting heavy rains for the few days that Joaquin was cooking up in the Atlantic to our southeast. As my collection partner and I prepared to head to the Outer Banks, we packed extra rain gear and continuously monitored the coastal weather to make sure we weren’t driving into a dangerous situation. As it was, we got lucky and didn’t work in anything worse than a light drizzle. We drove north to Currituck Banks, to check on the maturity of the Sea Oats (Uniola paniculata) that we are planning to collect in that area. We were greeted by a tumultuous sea and high winds. We stayed only long enough to take a peek at the Uniola and see that where there is normally a wide, flat, beach that 4×4 trucks use as a road, there were only angry gray waves breaking just below the primary dunes. We had only spent one day at the Outer Banks when rain, high tides, and wind-driven currents started to flood the roads. We quickly decided to get off the barrier islands before anything could happen that would leave us stranded out there on what is basically a very thin strip of sand off the mainland.
Winds whip a “No Swimming” flag as the ocean becomes tumultuous ahead of Joaquin’s arrival.
We kept watching Joaquin, not sure yet if he would hit the coast or veer east out to sea. We headed north to Virginia and got a head start on the storm. While we were there, the rain subsided a bit, but again, high winds, heavy rains in the area, and higher-than-normal tides were causing minor flooding all over the place. We had to cancel visits to all of our National Wildlife Refuge sites, as they closed due to flooding. We went to a few more sites during the week, but high water made some of our potential collections impossible. In the end, we headed back to Chapel Hill early and spent more time than normal working on species research and keying out some unknowns. It was actually great to spend the time identifying some of the unknown plants we have been encountering. Now we know more of the species that we are looking for in our seed scavenger hunt.
Next week, the weather is supposed to be clear and I’m sure we will be very busy collecting everything that we didn’t get to last time around. I hope everyone else is staying safe as the weather becomes a bit more tumultuous this month. Until next time, peace outside!
Emily Driskill
SOS East: North Carolina Botanical Garden