As July is coming to an end, many of my collection goals I had made at the beginning of my internship are wrapping up. I find myself with a higher confidence in collecting seed. I have realized that 10,000 seed is actually not that much. Many of my plants (and many plants in general) produce so many seeds that I only need to collect from a handful to reach 10,000. This plant below has about 4 seed per little capsule and hundreds of capsules per plant!
I am still learning plant identification skills everyday! I love knowing what plants I am seeing and which ones are native or not. Plant identification is something I will never get tired of.
I got to meet with a botanist in the Forest Service that does active restoration in Siskiyou county. Having a day just to hear what she does and how she does it was awesome! It really made me think about my career path and that I may want to guide my career into restoration. My mentor is not doing restoration and may not start any projects till a few years from now, so unfortunately gaining experience in that field is unlikely. However, it does motivate me to look into jobs in the restoration business and hopefully get a job in that field after SOS.
The temperatures have been rising since May and now they seem to have reached a plateau. They oscillate around 100 and 107, usually the latter at the end of the week. Thank goodness most of my seeds have been collected and I can enjoy the AC more often. Although, I find myself day dreaming about the outside as I get chills every now and again from the AC being turned up too high.
The BLM office hosted and participated in a float trip down the Trinity river. We all set afloat on rafts to head downstream. The mission of the trip was to monitor a long-term restoration project. The goal of the project was to create more inlets from the main river to create more fish and wildlife habitat. This was a really fun float and gave a different view of the river. The public was also invited on this trip and they got to see the improvements on the river. Overall this was a great learning experience!
-Redding, CA BLM office