I am close to two-thirds through my internship. I feel like getting to know the area and scouting populations was a distinct part of my internship. Making seed collections was a sudden chaotic second part of my internship. Since my last post to the blog, we at the Mother Lode Field Office have doubled our SOS collections, from 9 to 18. As I have revisited sites to increase the size and diversity of collections, I have been able to start collections of other species. Targeting multiple populations in one area has been an efficient way of making collections. Since arriving back from the training at the Chicago Botanic Garden, a Youth Conservation Corps team has been working at our office. The training helped prepare me for speaking with this crew about Seeds of Success as they have joined me in the field for collections. I have also spent considerable time processing the collections, i.e. organizing photos, scanning data forms, shipping seeds, and confirming species identifications at the UC Davis Herbarium. As for the remaining two months of my internship, I hope to make a few more SOS collections and then wrap up the post-collection tasks. Beyond that is a bit of a mystery. I will likely be working at a USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Plant Materials Center. I am keen to learn more about where and how some of the working collections from this year could be utilized for restoration. Some collections were too small to incorporate into SOS, so finding a use for those is important to us. Thistle eradication, in part through rotational grazing, has been ongoing on some grass lands at our field office. The needle grass that I collected may be utilized there. As we have collected multiple species from particular locations, it would be great to see those species utilized together for restoration. For instance, larkspur, checkerbloom, and iris collected from one oak woodland could be established at an adjacent woodland. The chaparral near Mokelumne Hill that burned last year has been a prolific collection site, including Zigadenus exaltatus, Calochortus monophyllus, Camissonia hirtella, Scrophularia californica, and hopefully a couple more species soon. Maybe that suite of plants will be critical to future fire restoration in the Sierra Nevada foothills someday. Then again, maybe they will be incorporated into someone’s research of fire ecology. Either way, I hope to hear about it. Check out some of my favorite seeds of the season below, and enjoy your internships!

Phacelia cicutaria

Delphinium hansenii

Sidalcea hartwegii

John Woodruff

BLM Mother Lode Field Office, CA