#itstartswithaseed

It’s National Learn About Butterflies Day! How Much Do You Know About Pollinators?

Pollinator species such as bees, butterflies, and bats provide a variety of benefits to native, non-native and agricultural plant species through pollination. This has a trickle-down effect, benefiting native plant communities as a whole and the wildlife that depend upon them.

In honor of National Learn About Butterflies Day, let’s take a tour through your public lands and learn about some pollinators.

These are two painted lady butterflies hanging out on some rabbitbrush flowers, and they go through their whole life cycle in under a month. 

Photo by BLM California.

Here we have a monarch butterfly caterpillar, who will one day fly between milkweed plants across North America. Bureau of Land Management efforts to plant milkweed in suitable locations help the monarch butterflies migrate.

Photo by S. Damon, ACE/BLM.

The Bay Checkerspot butterfly adults typically only live for about 10 days, but they make sure to make use of that time by feeding on the nectar of some of their favorite plants - like dwarf plaintain and purple owl’s clover.

Photo by BLM Wyoming.

Moths deserve some love too! This caterpillar will grow up to be a White-lined Sphinx Hawk moth, whose wingspan can grow up to three and a half inches.

Photo by Meredith McClure, BLM.

Sagebrush Checkerspots love the nectar of Desert Globemallow and Desert Marigolds- especially at the Red Rock Canyon Trails in Nevada.

Photo by Chelise Simmons, BLM.

THE RIGHT SEED, in THE RIGHT PLACE, at THE RIGHT TIME

This week, the Bureau of Land Management joined research, land management, industry, and restoration professionals dedicated to the collection, development, production, and use of native seed.  The 2017 National Native Seed Conference was organized around the goals of the National Seed Strategy , with the aim of getting “The right seed in the right place at the right time.”

Here we share one of the many examples of how the BLM and partners’ involvement in the national Seeds of Success (SOS) program has helped achieve the goals of the National Seed Strategy. SOS is the first step in the process of collecting seed that is vital to conserving the genetic material of native plant communities. Additionally, seed is made available to be grown out by BLM partners to develop seed stocks that can be used in rehabilitation and restoration efforts around the country.

Following the National Seed Strategy’s charge “to expand the collection, conservation, and assessment of native plant genetic resources for use now and into the future,” BLM Colorado has made more than 900 collections from a wide variety of native plant species around the state since 2002. Seed collections such as beardtongues (Penstemon secundiflorus) and milkweeds (Asclepias speciosus) that are important for native pollinators, shrubs like big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) that provide habitat for wildlife such as the Greater Sage-Grouse, or native grasses that can be used to revegetate areas after a fire, have come from all of Colorado’s ecosystems.

Continued and expanded partnerships and research will ensure that appropriate plant materials are around for decades to come in order to improve and restore our nation’s public lands.

Learn more about the Plant Conservation Alliance.

Fun Fact Friday: Tiny Sagebrush Seeds Use Winter to Their Advantage

By Wendy Velman, Botany Program Lead for BLM-MT/DK Photos by Wendy Velman, BLM and Craig Miller, BLM

Did you know sagebrush is part of the Artemisia genus of the Asteraceae, or sunflower family? Imagine a large extended family of plants where each member is as connected and unique as your own family - that’s the Asteraceae family! Even though sagebrush comes from a large family, it stands out of the crowd thanks to special adaptations that help it flourish is North America’s sagebrush ecosystem. One of those is taking advantage of chilly winter months to help foster a new generation of sagebrush plants. 

Sagebrush blooms in late summer or early fall, often flowering right before the first hard frost. The flowers rely on wind and freezing temperatures to prepare the seeds. Wind pollinates and disperses the seeds and freezing temperatures help sagebrush to set, or ripen, their seeds. The plant times its seed dispersal for early winter, preferably when there is some snow on the ground and more snow to come. This requires another special sagebrush trick.  

Each May, BLM Colorado partners with Bear Creek Lake Park and the Colorado Native Plant Society to hold an annual Celebrate Wildflowers event. The partners lead trail hikes and teach participants about how to identify wildflowers along the trail at Hayden Green Mountain Park in Lakewood, Colorado, just outside of Denver. In addition to the hike, the guides present information about invasive species and provide the Junior Explorer Native Plants Activity Book to participants. Available on our My Public Lands Pinterest boards!

#itstartswithaSEED: Keeping Seeds Native Over the course of the next few weeks we will be sharing stories about ongoing projects happening across BLM. Visit the My Public Lands Flickr for a full collection.  BLM Alaska Forester Eric Geisler has a task that doesn’t have to do with trees. He has to figure out how much native seed is needed for revegetation or restoration projects statewide over the next five years. That’s about how long it takes to go from initial seed collection to processing, production, and storage for the necessary quantities.

BLM Alaska’s Seeds of Success partners with several others to collect and promote the use of Native Seeds. The tree main partners are the Alaska Plant Materials Center, Alaska natural Heritage Program and the Chicago Botanical Garden Conservation Land Management intern program.  

The interns hired by Chicago Botanical Garden serve a five month term where they learn Alaska species and collect seeds and along with herbarium specimens.  The interns work under the direction of the Alaska Natural Heritage program that helps BLM make decisions on where to collect seeds each year and which species to target.  While the emphasis is always on species for revegetation or workhorse species, the Natural Heritage program and the interns collect as many other species as are available from the sites they visit throughout the summer.  These collections are then sent to the Alaska Plant Materials Center for processing.  Alaska’s Seeds of Success program collects seeds from over 50 geographically distinct plant varieties each year. READ MORE HERE.

#itstartswithaSEED: Seeding the Land

Last week the National Seed Strategy for Rehabilitation and Restoration was released - a comprehensive, science-based strategy to address the threat of wildfires that are damaging landscapes across the West. Over the course of the next few weeks we will be sharing stories about ongoing projects happening across BLM. Visit the My Public Lands Flickr for a full collection. 

Following such environmentally catastrophic events as Oregon's Long Draw Fire, local land managers use rangeland seed drills to restore vegetation and help prevent soil erosion. Thanks to this heavy machinery, seeds are being mechanically planted en masse without having to resort to the slower work of planting by hand. But after many hours of scuffing terrain, creating furrows, and dropping and covering seeds, these drills must be sent by BLM Oregon to its Vale District's International Rangeland Drill Repair Center.

At this shop, seed drills are refurbished in a large garage that can handle up to three seed drills at a time. Two workers receive and evaluate each machine, much like your neighborhood mechanic might inspect your car. Then the resulting work orders will vary depending on the repair.

A drill used on smooth terrain like burned-out sagebrush habitat will show little to no wear. Workers can quickly replace warped discs and perform a safety inspection before getting the machine back to work. However, a drill used on harder rock and in steep gullies may crack a frame or break a spindle. That type of job may take a couple weeks. In some cases, the shop must obtain custom-made parts.

"There isn't another district or another shop in BLM that does this," said Mark Manezes, the shop's head drill repair mechanic. READ MORE.

SEED PROGRAM ANSWERS AN URGENT NEED

Once a wildfire is extinguished, the clock starts ticking on how long land managers and landowners have to keep non-native invasive plants from taking over, compounding the loss to the surrounding to the ecological and human community.  Not only do invasives crowd out native plants, but they also can provide a new crop of fire fuel for the next wildfire season and cause other imbalances in the greater ecosystem.

To break this cycle, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and 11 other federal agencies and more than 300 private-sector partners have collaborated on a National Seed Strategy to get the right seed to the right place at the right time.

Two historical examples of the need for this strategy are the Hurricane Sandy that hit the East Coast in 2012 and the 2011 Bastrop County Fire in Texas.  After Sandy struck, 1 million dune-stabilizing native plants were needed, yet none were available.  It will take 5 years to meet the demand created by that giant storm.  

More than 32,000 acres were burned in the Bastrop fire, the most destructive wildfire in Texas history.  Local drought-hardy seeds were found forgotten in a warehouse refrigerator and have been used to grow a half million seedlings that are now being used for restoration.

3 Things You Should Know About the National Seed Strategy

The National Seed Strategy for Rehabilitation and Restoration was released yesterday - a comprehensive, science-based strategy to address the threat of wildfires that are damaging landscapes across the West.

Here are the top three things you need to know about the Strategy:

The need for seeds. 

Location, location, location.

It is all about working together.  

Read more about each of these HERE.