Winter in Chicago, O’hare was shut down, so was Midway; I had a couple friends with tickets to New Years runs in their home of Denver and no way to get back there. I’d just bought a car, and realized I couldn’t take my preferred (treacherous!) route through beautiful Bozeman and Missoula, so the southern route it was. We spent the next few nights dancing around seeing bluegrass, before notions of the great west pulled me back into the Rockies. I woke up, after a short day of driving, on the border of Wyoming and Utah and traded in the 80 for the 84 to head Northwest towards home. After winding through the Uintah, to breakfast in Ogden, I reached Idaho, mountains in each direction with a sea of steppe bridging them and me. After a few hours into the drive I realized I absolutely had to move to Idaho; about two months later my CLM offer was for a job in Twin Falls-a town that’s flat, but with about 8 mountain ranges within a two hours drive-I accepted instantly. So anyways, why was I brought here?

It’s my incredible fortune that this is my second CLM internship, that I’m participating in a rare plant monitoring project, and I’m firmly rooted in the intermountain west. Our species of interest is Lepidium papilliferum, a somewhat succulent salt’n’pepper plant. It is restricted to these areas called “Slickspots”, supposedly these were formed during the Pleistocene by clay being washed down slight gradients and accumulating and forming a somewhat hard pan. The clay does several things, most notably: it retains considerable amounts of moisture, retains some cations such as Sodium, and provides a physical barrier to establishment for many species, which for many years have precluded these sites from extensive colonization by other species. Now, it’s habitat is being encroached upon by graminoid winter annuals (such as that, what’s it called again…oh yeah Bromus tectorum, and Taeniatherum caput-medusae) and there is concern that its population is on the decline. Its conservation status has wavered from Endangered to Threatened  (and back) many times, but due to interesting (e.g. unpredictable) seed bank dynamics its status is still up for debate because demographic trends have been hard to deduce with relevant power. So, along with three other interns we are going to walk prospective transects and search for habitat, as well as new populations so that they may be monitored in the future too, so that the species range, may be comprehensively ascertained. Yes I know what your thinking, “oh so they are using aerial photos to determine prospective habitat and then investigating on foot to determine whether the plants are actually there”- yeah that’s it (except the photo aspect has been done for us, and sometimes what may seem like a slick spot from above is just where a badger has kicked back dirt, or water washes through scrub leaving channels). To assess potential habitat, we walk through it on a meandering transect, which may be viewed as a wave (remember, a sphere has maximum surface area;  in terms of 2 dimensions by walking “half circles” you see a lot more space than walking straight- I’ll illustrate this mathematically next post, I need an illustration program I like to do this).

Anyways, I have so much to say I can’t even start or I won’t stop!

obligatory Balsamorhiza sagittata picture!  alt. 2134m, S* asp., N42*05.490″ W 113*43.458″, 4/29/16

I  will admit I have been hiking up into the melting (amidst quite a few snow and hail storms!) alpine climate, and walking throughout the desert, and making many observations and generating questions and refining hypothesis pertaining to dormancy release. I’ve become very interested in synchronization amongst populations and communities and which environmental cues are triggering physiological responses and how these may be affected by climate change. Of course, as always, I’ve been drifting around the wild thinking about the role of chemicals in plants, anyways there’s too much here to mention anything. Current reading: Physiological Plant Ecology-Larcher, Genes, Genetics, and Genomes, and Alpine Plant Life-Korner.  I recently finished Plant Physiology and Development 6th ed (the second ed. I’ve read lol!)-get this book!

Here are some pictures and here are some words to revel in, and to help see us on our journeys. Idaho is a land of impressions…

…things you may find crawling around the Owhyee desert… Chylismia scapoidea

“i wore my boots out walkin’
poured my heart out talkin’
i felt the pain & i broke the chain
but i still got a long way to go

been on the road ‘til tomorrow
been through the joys & the sorrows
came through the flood
& i pulled through the mud
but i still got a long way to go

been in the back-room dealin’
been on a long hook reelin’
crashed in the shed
& i woke in a sunny bed
& i still got a long way to go

been on the rails & big muddy
i’ve crossed the trails rocky & rutted

been down the road a million miles
but i still got a long way to go

i’ve traveled near & traveled far
i beat a hole in my guitar
crawled with the zeroes
& i stood with my heroes
& i still got a long way to go

been in the rain & on the run
i worked a long day in the sun
i slopped the pails
& i beat the nails
but i still got a long way to go

i tried the a verse as the b verse
i took the c verse to the chorus
rewrote & changed it
then rearranged it
& i still got a long way to go

i lost my way in darkest night
i woke again & saw the light
opened the book & i . . took a look
but i still got a long way to go

tell me what . . . what is the soul of a man?
he’s got to reach up his hand
tell me what . . . what is the soul of a man?
he’s got to reach out his hand
& i still got a long way to go
still got a long way to go
still got a long way to go”

-railroad earth

unknown species, will update. Notice the differentiation of cell types underground and subsequent elongation of stem. cerca 2050m, growing alongside flowing vernal melt, under canopy.