{"id":18818,"date":"2012-09-07T08:39:33","date_gmt":"2012-09-07T15:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/?p=18818"},"modified":"2012-09-07T08:39:33","modified_gmt":"2012-09-07T15:39:33","slug":"collecting-the-harvest-unsown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/?p=18818","title":{"rendered":"Collecting the Harvest Unsown"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the\u00a0sagebrush steppe\u00a0or the Eastern Cascade foothills. Past the old farmhouse, near the spring, in the burned area, or\u00a0on an\u00a0ancient basalt flow.\u00a0Seed collecting.\u00a0I drive slow, both because the BLM road\u00a0I am\u00a0on seems to have more rocks in it than around it, and because\u00a0I am intently focused on finding seeds to collect. Something catches my eye and I step on the brakes.\u00a0I jump out of the truck and examine a plant, or remnant of a plant. Perhaps it is something\u00a0I scouted out months before when it was in flower, before the landscape\u00a0dried into shades of brown.\u00a0A dehisced skeleton of a plant, but still offering a seedhead. I eagerly grab it, and use my fingernails or a knife to\u00a0break open\u00a0the seed head, capsule, silique, achene,\u00a0spikelet, follicle, schizocarp\u00a0or\u00a0pod. I assess whether the seeds are ready. Too green and soft\u00a0means its not ready yet. Some\u00a0fruits may have a small hole in them and a worm rather than a seed, in which case I need to cut open more seeds to determine if they are all like that.\u00a0If the seeds are dry and hard, they are ready. Then I look up at the population. Are there enough plants\u00a0to collect from? If so, have they produced enough fruits? I once observed, on a\u00a0quiet lunch break, a chipmunk running around grabbing lupine stalks with its tiny hands and\u00a0bending the pods into its mouth, which likely expains why\u00a0we haven’t been able to\u00a0find many\u00a0lupine pods\u00a0despite its abundant flowers.\u00a0How many seeds are in each seed head or fruit? Simple math equations run through my head as I keep in mind that our collection target is at least 10,000 seeds and only twenty percent of a population can be taken. If everything looks good, I get a bag and start collecting. If there are 100 seeds per seed head, it may take a matter of minutes, but sometimes there are only several seeds per fruit and it takes hours.<\/p>\n

Despite the drought, my field partner and I have been able to make over twenty collections thus far. We have sought out the higher elevations and wetter areas of our field office. Plants also have staggered blooming and fruiting times, meaning that in one trip we\u00a0may collect seed from\u00a0an early flowering species and collect an herbarium specimen from a later flowering one. As we get into late August I can tell that the collections will get more and more sparse.<\/p>\n

I often think about where the seed that we collect will go. Collection is the beginning of a long process. After being cleaned and sorted,\u00a0it may end up in a seed bank. Or it may be grown out in fields, producing thousands more.\u00a0Lately it has been over 90 degrees every day, and\u00a0large fires are raging all around Alturas, blanketing the area in thick smoke. There will likely be a huge demand for seed in the coming years to stabilize\u00a0slopes and\u00a0out compete weeds in the vast areas of the West that have\u00a0burned\u00a0this\u00a0season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The Pit River canyon. Many of our collections have been from this area of our field office.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

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We startled some wild horses on a seed collecting trip.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Collecting a sedge at a spring at Yankee Jim ranch.<\/p><\/div>\n

Joe Broberg<\/p>\n

BLM Botany Intern<\/p>\n

Alturas, CA<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the\u00a0sagebrush steppe\u00a0or the Eastern Cascade foothills. Past the old farmhouse, near the spring, in the burned area, or\u00a0on an\u00a0ancient basalt flow.\u00a0Seed collecting.\u00a0I drive slow, both because the BLM road\u00a0I am\u00a0on seems to have more rocks in it than around … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1687,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18818"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1687"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18818"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18832,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18818\/revisions\/18832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}