{"id":2560,"date":"2010-08-05T05:41:51","date_gmt":"2010-08-05T12:41:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/?p=2560"},"modified":"2010-08-05T05:41:51","modified_gmt":"2010-08-05T12:41:51","slug":"seed-collecting-it%e2%80%99s-like-berry-picking-except-you-can%e2%80%99t-sneak-a-snack-from-your-bucket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/?p=2560","title":{"rendered":"Seed collecting, it\u2019s like berry picking except you can\u2019t sneak a snack from your bucket."},"content":{"rendered":"

I went for a run the other day down a trail that goes along the fence line of the local strawberry fields.\u00a0 People were out harvesting the berries, slowly walking down the rows of plants picking as they went.\u00a0 As I watched, mentally savoring the taste of fresh ripe strawberries, the realization came to me that my job and the berry harvester\u2019s job were quite similar, aside for a few minor differences.\u00a0 The strawberry fields are neat organized homogeneous rows of plants that are planted at specific times of the year so their phenology runs in time with the climate of the area, at the time we call strawberry season.\u00a0 The plants we collect seeds from are naturally established scattered throughout the ecosystem according to various seed dispersal methods.\u00a0 The plants are required to comply with the forces of natural selection, or just darn luck, for the seed to become established, germinate, grow to maturity, flower, and produce seed.\u00a0 \u00a0Sometimes you have to do a bit of searching to find the next plant, luckily in the desert you just have to stand in one place and let your eyes do the wandering until they find the correct shape\/color of the plant you\u2019re collecting from.\u00a0 The strawberry collectors get to collect large tasty fruits into their buckets, although I\u2019m sure their work regulations don\u2019t allow snacking on the produce while on the job, it must be delightful to think of all the possible uses the strawberry consumers may indulge in.\u00a0 We don\u2019t get to snack on the seeds we collect either, but we can think of the future uses of the seed; the SOS Seed Bank, various garden experiments, and restoration projects.\u00a0 Our seeds aren\u2019t always as easy to collect as the strawberries.\u00a0 Some seeds are small and need to be picked one at a time, some are bunched together and can be tapped into a bucket, others have pappuses that threaten to blow away the moment you touch them, and some are prickly and require gloves.\u00a0 Some collections are quick and it\u2019s easy to get 10,000 seeds, others require multiple visits and additional hours to meet the quota.\u00a0 As with the strawberries, our seeds can be subject to predation, leaving us to collect empty seed cases.<\/p>\n

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Ambrosia dumosa (burro-bush) seeds<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dendromecon rigida (bush poppy) seeds<\/p><\/div>\n

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Seeds from Encelia farinosa (brittlebush)<\/p><\/div>\n

Harvesting food and materials has been an element of human survival for all of time.\u00a0\u00a0 Our modern society is largely disconnected with the act of harvesting, and when we do take part in the process it is usually in a garden style setting.\u00a0 Participating in the SOS seed collections draws out the inherent, yet often submerged, connection between human and environment.<\/p>\n

Sarah Brewster<\/p>\n

Escondido, CA<\/p>\n

San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went for a run the other day down a trail that goes along the fence line of the local strawberry fields.\u00a0 People were out harvesting the berries, slowly walking down the rows of plants picking as they went.\u00a0 As … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":158,"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\/2560"}],"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\/158"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2560"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2573,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2560\/revisions\/2573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}