What’s in a name? Turns out, Shakespeare, quite a lot

Starting a new job means learning a lot of new names, and not just my coworkers’.

“Do you know who this is?” William asked, staring at a stem of grass in each hand.

I looked at Cicely, my fellow CLM intern, and then back at William. We were at a loss, and honesty is the best policy. “Um, no.”

He broke into a huge grin, shoving the plants into our hands. “It’s Timothy! In the boot!”

We quickly learned that our newest friend was Timothy grass, aka Phleum pratense, and “in the boot” is botany slang for when the panicle is still developing in the leaf sheath (read: the fluffy part of the grass hasn’t popped out yet). Cicely and I have only been working for about two weeks now, and our time has been mostly split between threatened species surveys and trainings. Lots of matching the face to the name, morphology to binomial nomenclature.

At this all-day grass workshop that William was leading, we spent most of the day going through dichotomous keys and practicing identification skills. There is nothing like sitting on the forest floor and measuring awn length through a loupe. Truly nothing like it.

Our group with botanist William Schlegel in Lolo National Forest

Our training also included “Deb Day” where Deborah Goslin, a retired botany technician and wellspring of knowledge, drove us around various sites and showed us many of the species our Forest Service site monitors. Deb really instilled in us a ‘stop and smell the ponderosas’ attitude. I am developing a reverence for the ecology of this forest: green on verdant green, strong-standing Douglas firs protecting the nodding onion in the understory below, how the tubular scarlet gilia is shaped so perfectly for the Rufous hummingbird’s beak. In the most literal sense of the term, it is awesome.

From left to right: me, Cicely, Li, and Deb at the top of Painted Rocks
“Baby’s first federally listed sensitive species!”: Castilleja covilleana

I feel like I’m learning so much every day that my brain is going to expand into my skull Megamind-style. Something that botany is teaching me is how names hold so much meaning. Take, for example, Lewisia rediviva (pictured below). Genus Lewisia is named for Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, who ate this root on his journey and collected specimens for Western botanists. The term rediviva comes from its ability to ‘revive’ from roots that could seem dead or dry – a useful skill in hot, rocky environments and intermontane grasslands. However, long before it had a Latin name, it went by several Indigenous names, including the Salish sp̓eƛ̓m̓ (spetlum) which means ‘bitter’. French trappers and traders also noted the bitter taste and called it racine amère, which translates directly in English to bitterroot!

From just a few words you can see the plant’s life cycle and its history with humanity. Isn’t that incredible? I saw my first bitterroot in bloom while on a hike in Missoula, before even entering the eponymous valley. It’s hard to name the feeling I had, seeing the plant that is so integral and defining to this place. Gratitude, responsibility, and joy are all true, but don’t seem to cover the depth of it. Regardless, those pink petals were the warmest welcome anyone could ask for. I’m so excited for the rest of the season in Bitterroot National Forest.

The famous root!

Until next time,

E

End of a season

I found out at the beginning of this month that my internship was going to end a little sooner than I had originally planned on. I was supposed to stay here at Dorena until the end of March, but a new job offer shortened that timeline by a month. Now I sit here during my last week of work thinking of all the things I did and friends I made this winter.

I was lucky to not only be partnered with such an amazing mentor (s/o to Lee), but it turns out my co-intern ended up being my long lost twin. It became a joke at Dorena that wherever one of us was, the other wasn’t far behind. Whether it was during work or our personal time, I always knew that if I asked Brenn if she wanted a lil treat she would say yes and off we’d go. I could also always count on her for weekend adventures, whether it was a day at the beach, or going hiking no matter the weather, I knew Brenn would be down for anything.

Interns go to the beach!

Another major part of this internship for me was Teo, the grumpy nursery cat. I’ve talked about him in blogs before, but I love this cat. It has been so fun getting to know him (i.e. bothering him), and pretending like he loves me too. Recently, I’ve been trying to “train” him into letting me pick him up without scratching my eyes out. It’s going pretty well, but I don’t think anyone is willing to take this task up after I leave so Teo will forget what it’s like to be picked up.

Here is me holding Teo, he clearly loves it.

This last month has gone so fast, which is both good and bad. Good because I’m ready for the next adventure, but bad because I will miss the friends and co-workers I’ve made since being here. I’ll be working for USGS in Moab, Utah, so I’m very excited to get back to the desert and bask in the sun like the little lizard I am. One thing I have really loved about Oregon as a whole is the amount of rainbows I’ve seen since I’ve been here. They’re nice reminders that good things come out of rain, and the sun is just that much better after rain.

Dorena ft a HUGE rainbow.

Internship Quickly Coming to a Close

It’s incredible to believe my position here with the Forest Service is coming to an end already. I thought 22 weeks was going to drag on; however, it has been a whirlwind and passed in the blink of an eye. February was relatively mundane at work but has been filled with some great memories of great people in a beautiful place. I saw some incredible waterfalls with my work twin. I ate a slightly squashed PB&J on top of a large rock overlooking the Willamette Valley. I had funny and interesting conversations with coworkers over seed cleaning, which consisted of everything and anything. Although my team has not won at our Monday night trivia events, we still have a blast not knowing I guess common knowledge questions???? I should have definitely paid more attention in history class as well as to the Grammys.

Overall, nothing too spectacular occurred this month. Towards the end of the month, I did get the Dorena cold for a few days, but it gave me the time to telework and get some well-needed rest. Sadly, my work twin and co-intern, Kass, will be leaving at the end of the month. She was a wonderful partner and sweet little treat buddy, but I know she is gonna have an amazing adventure in her next position. I will always remember our numerous trips to Taco Bell, “council” meetings to discuss the perfect texts, and little hikes and adventures. After this week, I only have about two weeks to go, which is sad but also exciting because it means my next adventure is beginning.

This is not Kass, but I wanted to include this photo because our mice (Teo) catcher was lookin a little goofy

There is really nothing too big to report this month, but there have been some extraordinary rainbows recently.

Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow is Our Oak Seedlings

I also will include some of the photos from last month because some of them are really sick. The ice storm definitely took a toll on the town, but it has recovered and is now looking forward to and preparing for the arrival of spring.

Warming the Dogs by the Fire
Plants Encased by Ice After the Great Ice Storm of 2024


Jack Frost Does Not Like Oregon

Hello everyone! I hope everyone is doing well and having a good time in the new year! January has been quite the busy month here in the Umpqua, but that has really made time fly by! The first few weeks were relatively quiet. We worked on seed cleaning and started the new process of extracting and packaging Douglas Firs and Ponderosa Pines for an assisted migration project, which addresses their geographic distribution in regards to climate change. It is a monotonous task; however, it does make the time pass because there is always something to be done. At Dorena, there is always something to be done, which I kinda love. I am never bored here.

Buuuuuuut, mid-January a gnarly ice storm hit my area and caused major damage to the community, native deciduous trees, and the power-grid. This storm created a temporary ice rink on every exposed surface and allowed me to slide to the grocery store rather than walking there. Do not get me wrong, it was beautiful, but it was also incredibly dangerous. Although I was lucky and only was without power and water for 6 days, others in the community did not receive their power for almost two weeks. After this experience, I think I take the doomsday preppers a little bit more seriously. This storm left my city in shambles from houses and cars being squashed by trees to fallen telephone lines across roads and sidewalks. Throughout the past few weeks, the community is still recovering and has dramatically increased their supply of firewood.

Post ice storm, Dorena regained power and normal activities returned. We continued on extracting and packaging the Douglases and Pines, but we had the awesome experience of having multiple jobs corps groups and volunteers come in to help the project. It was incredible. The extra hands turned the expected end date from two months to two weeks. Without their help, we would have been extracting and packaging for weeks.

Overall, this month has flown by. I am sure I am missing a few events here and there but that is kinda the gist. There was definitely some good moments, like sowing oaks with everyone in the greenhouses after the storm, which was so fun to drink our coffees and chat, but there were also some learning moments. Life is not life without both sides. This month definitely was a wild ride, but I am excited to see where February takes me. Also unfortunately, last week I did break my laptop; thus, I will have to share all my photos for next month 🙁

Hope y’all have a good February!

Iced in

I’ve never thought of Oregon, especially western Oregon, as having a particularly harsh winter. I was expecting lots of rain, this is the “wet coast” after all, but I still didn’t think it would be harsh like the winters I was used to in Utah and Colorado. I especially wasn’t expecting a winter storm so severe it closed down our nursery for a week due to unsafe driving conditions and a lack of power and water. This wasn’t just a winter storm though, this was an ice storm, and wow it delivered a LOT of ice.

I had never experienced an ice storm before, so I didn’t know what to expect. People who have been here for a while didn’t seem too concerned about it, so I figured it wasn’t much to worry about. I thought “okay, it’ll just be cold for a couple of days, nothing too bad” and things will go on as normal. Plot twist, that is not what happened.

We finished our (first) week of extracting and packing firs and pines with relatively few problems, most of the problems weren’t real problems, we just needed to work the kinks out so we could effectively extract and pack 62,000 trees (yes, 62,000, I know, it’s insane). After a week of putting trees into boxes, I was ready for the long weekend. My co-intern and I had plans for most of the weekend, we were going to go hiking and shopping one day, then go to the coast another. None of those things happened because starting that Friday night, everything was snow and ice covered.

At first we decided to change our hiking plans from Saturday to Monday as it was snowing Saturday when we were supposed to meet up, we figured it was better safe than sorry. Then Sunday came and the road conditions were somehow worse than Saturday, so we cancelled our coast plans and hunkered down in our perspective homes. Fast forward to Wednesday, and my house hasn’t had power since Tuesday night, but it’s starting to warm up and rain at least. By this point, me, my roommates, and all of our neighbors had been trapped in our houses since Saturday and were all going stir crazy, so we all went outside and started shoveling the melting ice so we could try to escape. After hours of shoveling ice in the rain, we had cleared tracks for car tires down our hill to the main road, and after a couple of attempts and fixes, we were able to escape.

This was my first time experiencing an ice storm, and I have to say, I think I prefer the snow that Utah and Colorado produce. This position has been full of a lot of firsts, which has been very exciting, but this is a first I probably could have done without. Oh well, at least now I know to prepare better the next time Oregon has an ice storm.

Stickers and Festivities

December is one of my favorite months of the year, and probably the only winter month I actually enjoy (I’m from the desert, snow and cold aren’t my things). The thing I enjoy most about December is Christmas, for the obvious reasons, but also because it means I get to see my family. There were two things that I didn’t expect to happen this December: one was our office has a holiday party, and the second was that I needed to put stickers on POC cells and it needed to happen fast. Obviously the first one is very exciting, but I wasn’t sure how exciting the second thing would be. Turns out, stickering is fun, satisfying, and pretty relaxing.

The Christmas party that happens at Dorena happens every year, there are even retired employees that come back for it every year, so it’s a big deal. I can’t speak to other years, but this years was so fun! There was so much yummy food, a white elephant gift exchange, paper snowflake making, Dorena trivia, wreath making, seconds on food, and just enjoying an afternoon of fun. Personally, aside from the food, the Dorena trivia was my favorite part of the afternoon. Everyone wrote their own questions about silly things found around Dorena, there were questions about books that have been on a bookshelf in the seed cleaning room for years, questions about Teo (Dorena’s resident cat), questions about posters in the bathrooms, and questions about a long time employees dog, just to name a few. I learned a lot during trivia, but the thing I learned that surprised me the most was that I’m really bad at making paper snowflakes.

Before the Christmas party could happen though, we still had a full week of work to get through. At our normal Monday morning meeting, we found out that all of the POC seedlings had been labeled wrong and that it was very important for us to get them relabeled correctly ASAP. I don’t know how they got labeled wrong, or how the POC biologist found out they were labeled wrong (that’s above my pay grade), but I did know that I was going to be a part of helping to correct the problem. I’m not going to lie, when I first heard about what we were doing, and how many stickers we had to apply to the cells, I was very worried that this was going to be a very long week and not very fun. I was wrong about both of those things.

The seedlings already had tags, so the POC biologist printed out stickers that we needed to apply to the existing tags. The stickers had to be applied in a specific way so they covered the incorrect information on the tags. The stickers were sorted into rolls based on which group of cells they needed to be applied to. Like I said, I was really worried that this was going to be a much less than ideal task, and boy was I wrong. It turns out, that stickering was very relaxing, satisfying, and honestly a bit meditative. Time flew while we were stickering, it took about an hour to do a full rack, and we were doing 3-4 racks a day. I don’t think I’ve ever had 3-4 hours of work go so fast or be so relaxing. It was honestly a great week leading up to the Christmas party, and a nice break from the constant seed cleaning.

Like I said, I knew the Christmas party would be a blast, but I was unsure of the hours of stickering I was going to have to do. That week was one of my favorite weeks here so far, and I’m hoping it only keeps getting better.

Our office Christmas tree.

A Bright Day in a Sea of Change

The end of November means that I’m one month into this five-month internship, and wow has it gone by quickly. I moved to Oregon from Utah for this job, and it came with a lot of life changes, some I saw coming, but others I was unprepared for. I’ve spent this past month learning about Oregon, trying to do as many local things as I can, and of course trying to get as much out of this internship as possible.

My main job here is seed cleaning, but I am not alone in this objective. There is another CLM intern here who I sit and clean seed with for most of the day. We spend a lot of time chatting and getting to know each other (and the Forest Service employees we work with), but we also spend a lot of time listening to podcasts while getting lost in the seed.

Probably the most exciting day of this internship (so far) was the day we got to drive west of Portland to Viento State Park to deliver plants that our Forest Service unit has been growing for a revegetation project in Viento. The day started out cloudy and foggy (as Oregon winter days are apt to do), but by the time we reached the outskirts of Portland, the sun had come out and we were able to see stunning views of Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens. It was my first time seeing these volcanic mountains, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Eventually we started driving though the Columbia River Gorge, which was absolutely stunning: the fall foliage was in full swing, the waterfalls were pouring, the Columbia River was flowing, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

Once we arrived at Viento, the job was fairly simple. We unloaded the plants and sorted them by species so that when the state park employees planted them later, they would know which plants went where. After about a half hour of unloading, we started the drive back to Dorena. On the way back however, we decided that an extra stop was necessary so my co-intern and I could get more acquainted with the local area. We stopped at Multnomah Falls for lunch and enjoyed not just the spectacular views, but watching a Search and Rescue training as well. After taking in the views we started our drive back to Dorena for the second time.

After we passed Portland, the clouds started to move in again, and before we got to Eugene, it was raining again. Another 30 minutes to Dorena, and you would have never known that just a couple hours earlier we were enjoying the sunshine while unloading plants and looking at waterfalls.

There have been a lot of good days in my first month at Dorena, but this was the most memorable. Change is inevitable, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad, you just have to embrace it and know nothing lasts forever. I’m excited to see where my time at Dorena takes me, and I’m excited for all the things I’m going to learn.

4 Months of Seeds of Success in the Midwest

Early in June, we were lucky enough to be led to a wonderful population of Blanketflower in Minnesota. By our third visit in August, the seed was ripe and ready to collect! I’m a big fan of this species for many reasons. Its deep red disk flowers and multicolored ray sepals are guaranteed to stun, and I find its latin name, Gaillardia aristata, easy to remember. To me, aristata looks like “artist” which I find easily associates with the colorfully painted inflorescence.

Bracts are my new identification besties, at least when it comes to identifying thistles and Liatris spp. Bracts are reduced leaves, or leaflike structures at the base of an inflorescence. Bracts can look so many different ways, even within a genus.

Identifying thistles can be hard. People say the leaves of many natives have fairly white leaf undersides. After I check the leaves, I check the bracts to help lead me to species ID. For example, if the bulbous scaly part beneath the florets (in this case I think you can call that an involucre), is wooly, it may be Cirsium muticum!

Blazing stars (Liatris spp.), of which there are quite a few native species in the Midwest, were relatively easy to key out once I learned to observe them for their inflorescence silhouettes and bract characters rather than their florets or leaves.

Early in the growing season, aka during the cool season, I found it difficult to identify big bluestem. All the grasses looked basically the same to me, short…and grassy… Big bluestem, Andropogon gerardii, is a native warm season grass that doesn’t flower until July. It’s spikes are often compared to the foot of a turkey- so people sometimes call it turkeyfoot. By July, I was starting to get familiar, and by August I was surrounded by turkeyfeet sometimes up to 7 ft tall. The specimen pictured below had a nice green silly-looking conehead insect on it.

A deep dive into the bottle gentian

Before going on trips to collect seed, our team does research on every plant on our list so that we can understand what it looks like at every stage and be better prepared to identify it within the field. It usually takes quite a while to learn the key characteristics and the plants sometimes meld together in my mind. For some plants, they are so unique and unexpected that I am ecstatic to find them in the field. One such plant is the bottle gentian, Gentiana andrewsii. It has 5 fused petals, forming a tube that will never open. This closed tube resembles a closed bottle, thus the name.

the icon, the legend, Gentiana andrewsii

While in northern Minnesota, the team saw one in the parking lot of our site and nowhere else. It is such an interesting inflorescence because it never opens. I could not imagine how it could be pollinated. After some outside research into the scientific literature, I learned that only bumblebees are physically able to crawl inside the tube and rub pollen on their sternum in the process. Oddly enough, the corolla tube of Gentiana andrewsii is much longer than the tongue of the two studied bumblebees. This would make it very difficult for bumblebees to access the nectar at the bottom. Instead, most bees access the nectar through lateral lacerations. The bees studied were not known for being corolla perforating species and no other mechanisms for lacerations were provided. Even as they steal nectar from some inflorescences, it was only observed coupled with also entering the tube to retrieve pollen. My theory is that the stealing is not driving changes on either side because the bees get nectar and the plants still get their pollen spread.

Flowering Big Bluestem (Andropogon gerardii)

Gentiana andrewsii is a dependable species for bumblebees because no other pollinators are in competition for the resources. I was bummed that we did not find a large population, but future collections of this plant would be great for native bee restoration efforts!

Check out this video on Facebook of a bee diving head first into the plant.

https://www.facebook.com/in.our.nature.gardens/videos/watch-this-bumblebee-push-her-way-into-the-flowers-of-closed-bottle-gentian/5348288618516323/

Working in the field is never a dull time with these views

Check out this amazing paper for more details!

Costelloe, B. H. (1988). Pollination ecology of Gentiana andrewsii. Ohio Journal of Science, 88(4), 132-138.

Is Southern Illinois Still the Midwest?

Over the past month, our team has spent many hours traveling throughout the Midwest to visit new USFWS field locations. While many of the sites we have recently visited were a bit closer to our homebase at the Chicago Botanic Garden, some felt quite different in more ways than one. One hitch that particularly stands out was our most recent hitch to visit the Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge near Carbondale.

Crab Orchard NWR is an interesting property, consisting of a series of reservoirs and encompassing nearly forty four thousand acres. There are incredible sandstone features, with some of the most beautiful hiking I have experienced in Illinois, although very different than the majority of the prairie state. If you are in the area, a day visit to the Rocky Bluff Trail is worth the detour! However, like so many of our public lands, there is a weird history with the property here, as some areas were used for the manufacture and testing of explosive devices during the second world war. Luckily, we did not have to survey those areas, and you should avoid these areas during your visit as well!

A scene from along the Rocky Bluff Trail

While conducting our plant surveys, we were joined by a Professional Botanist who was incredibly knowledgeable with respect to regional flora, which was very helpful in locating target species on our list, while also adding a few. Some of my favorite plants that I learned on this trip include the American Bladdernut Staphylea trifolia, the Inland Oat Chasmanthium latifolium, Hibiscus laevis, and the Zig Zag Spiderwort Tradescantia subaspera.

Surveying a refuge with over 43,000 acres meant working up quite the appetite, and we were lucky enough to be blessed to dine at the Famous Lodge at Giant City State Park, not once but twice in one week. World renowned for their Unlimited Family Style Fried Chicken Dinner, this facility (along with the surrounding state park) was completed in the 1935 by the CCC, and not much has changed since then. The taxidermied raccoon and deer really bring in a sense of ambiance lacking in dining establishments further North. Now, I was not going to back away from the meal after reading the words “World Renowned” and “Unlimited” in the same sentence, and was soon to be richly rewarded. I could not have been happier with my choice (except to possibly substitute sweet potato fries for the green beans) and did indeed end up ordering an additional round of chicken. The team was so impressed by the meal, we ended up there the following evening for an encore.

The World Renowned Family Style Meal from the Lodge at Giant City State Park

While our trip to Southern Illinois was enjoyable, informative, and successful, I cannot help but feel something was different about this hitch. The plant communities consisted of a number of different species, unknown to us on the team. The hot, humid environment was not kind to our us or our tents, keeping in the moisture. Most importantly though, as someone who was born, raised and majorly consumed fried chicken in the Midwest, every where you order chicken 1) they serve ranch as a side and 2) it is never as good as at the Lodge at Giant City. Southern Illinois may not actually be the Midwest, but it is a cool area of the country to check out (and decide for yourself). 3/3 recommend.