Hey world, greetings from Southern Idaho. I’ve been up to far too much to fit into the blog, but let’s take a stab at a recap anyways (I’m no J. Chappelle-loved the drones bud). My highlights have been: spending a day botanising with the BLM (super hero-legend) Roger Rosentreter, he was state head botanist for 35 years, is an exceptional lichenologist (and has written many books on the subject) and from that couple generations of crazy mountaineer, super fun, cool as courduroy botanists-folks like Dr. Ken Robertson who inspired me to do field work. I always love learning from people like this, so many pieces of information they take for granted and have never bothered to write down that may otherwise be lost. Another social highlight was seeing the lovely Kendl Winters and extraordinary Palmer T. Lee play a show as the The Lowest Pair near Boise; after my banjo fix, I got to drive far into the Owyhee desert listening to someone play Dead on the community radio as the stars danced in a moonless night.
My trainings were really incredible and I’m very grateful for the opportunities. My first training was the Idaho Native Plant Society meeting, where I was able to explore the high precipitation refuge populations in central Idaho. These communities are very similar to the plant life of Western Washington and Oregon. The second training was the Idaho Botanical Foray. The premise of these are that folks from each of Idaho’s four university herbaria show up to an underrepresented area in their collections and collect everything in sight. This was very fun and allowed me to study the local flora with a ton of incredible botanists. What I really loved about this is that I was able to meet a ton of botanists whose vouchers I have been staring at in Digital Herbaria for the last few years. Highlights were botanisng riparian zones with Mike Mancuso, collecting at a breakneck pace on mountain wind-swept slopes with Prof. Jim Smith. As well as talking the Owyhee flora, Onagrads, and Lomatium’s with Prof. D. Mansfield. It was fun to see everyone’s collection methods and philosophies, especially as I have been collecting largely from three groups here, the Onagrads, the Apioids, and the Boraginaceae for various projects.
pressing with co-worker Sam West, Scott Montgomery and Prof. J Smith in the background working on those waist high hay-bales. Idaho Botanical Foray 2016, Pahsimeroi Valley
Our field district was ravaged by several fires over the last decade and has been struggling to re-vegetate. I have been spending a lot of time thinking about restoration protocols for re-seeding and what physiological parameters of taxa may allow for quick re-colonization and prevent cheatgrass invasion.
Another project I have been working on aside form LEPA searching is adding content to a photo field guide of the plants of our district office. I have been working on writing dichotomous keys for Erigeron, Castilleja, Eriogonum, Crepis, Penstemon, Lupinus, and a couple others. Writing keys and making line-drawings has been a highly educational and challenging task. Part of my ambitions are for the keys to be usable by folks without formal botany training, as well as making them aesthetically interesting to the forthcoming generation of millennial botanists-they are both tough curve balls to try and address, but I’m on the homestretch. At the same time I have been working on reviewing the advance copy of Flora of the Pacific Northwest- I have dozens of notes in my old version about errors, but none in the new one! Giblin and all his associates are doing incredible work on this one (and inspiring me to step it up on my own keys!).
One of the great things about focusing on a singular plant in a season is learning, and conjecturing about the ecology that allows the plant to survive in its niche. The inorganic chemistry of slickspots gives us a lot to think about, and really drives home many themes of soil science, nutrient and moisture relations, population genetics, as well as temperature and climate dynamics.
I’ve been able to explore the mountains and deserts of Idaho in my space time. No pictures can do justice to the areas I have been. I’ve been infatuated with the Owyhee desert and the high mountains of central Idaho, as well as the ranges of Northern Nevada
Group shot! notice Evan of CBG fame leaning low. :-). i’m that kid back right with a press.
“Desert Dawn, rise up early, lift your song….
Smell the scent of flowers dancing on the wind,
dancing on the wind!”
-Michael Kang of the string cheese incident
sorry loose, format and essentially devoid of original photos (both above photos taken by (Steve Martin, just as funny as the one your thinking of), but if you’re in the west you understand that pictures can’t do justice to anything you want to snap one of.