I’m working at the Greenbelt Native Plant Center on Staten Island, NY. Our small regional seed bank is working to make upwards of 300 collections of native plant seeds this year. These seeds will be used for restoration projects in areas damaged by hurricane Sandy. The first few weeks were filled with intensive training in plant identification and seed collection strategies. But now we’ve been loosed into the wild to do the work! We were assigned to teams in different geographic regions from which to collect. I’m working with my fellow intern, Laura, and we’re doing seed collection in the forests, dunes, and marshes of Long Island (which, in fact, is QUITE long, and quite a bit greener than I had expected). We have started to get into the swing of things, so here’s a look at what we did this week!
Monday: Every successful trip into the field starts with thorough planning in the office. Laura and I assess which species might be ready for collection and chose which new sites we want to scout. We book accommodation, plan meals, pick up our rental car, and contact park managers to let them know we’d be on site. We organize our tools: Plant press, clippers, GPS. rain gear, data sheets, collection envelopes etc. With (almost) everything accounted for, we head home and got an early night to prepare for the next day’s work.
Tuesday: I tote my backpack full of supplies through the subway crowded with commuters. I get some odd looks (my khaki field pants and and tie-dye t-shirt do not blend in with typical New York fashion) but I arrive on time at the subway station near Laura’s apartment in Brooklyn. We drive two hours until we reach our first field site: Rocky Point Pine Barrens Preserve. We spend a couple of hours hiking around, eagerly noting the abundance of bearberry (Arctostaphylus uva ursi) and wild indigo (Baptisia tinctoria). After we’ve sufficiently scouted this site, we head to Brookhaven State Park. We find some nice populations around several small ponds, and along a powerline cut.
pondside Cephalanthus occidentalis (Buttonbush)
Wednesday: Today we visit two new sites: Robert Cushman Murphy County Park and Sears Bellows County Park. Both are full of dried up pond beds, filled with interesting species. One of my favorite finds was a beautiful collection of Rhexia virginica growing happily in the mud of the dried up pond.
Rhexia virginica
Around the main pond on site we find an abundance of a rush called Juncus effusus that is seeding. It takes a bit of bushwhacking through the surrounding thickets, but we collect from the entire population.
We also find this little guy.
Thursday: We return to a site that we visited last week, Connetquot River State Park, to finish a collection of two grasses. We move swiftly through the roadside grasses, stopping to find another population of Juncus effusus around a stream that flows through the middle of the park. We finish up the day happy with our three completed seed collections.
Friday: Back in the office, we lay out our seed to dry in the lab, and plan for more botanical adventures ahead!