Rare Plant Monitoring: Tips of the Trade
Tom Erler and Darcy Dauble are two long-time rare plant monitoring volunteers with a breadth of experience to share with our 38 recently trained monitors! During the monitoring season you will catch Tom searching for rare plants across the state, anywhere from the San Juan Islands to Douglas County. His day job is with the King County Noxious Weed program. Darcy Dauble is a retired librarian who can be found botanizing the Blue Mountains of southeastern Washington. Here are some excerpts from our interview about what it takes to be a successful rare plant monitor.
1. When did you start volunteering for Rare Care?
DARCY: For several years, before I retired in 2011, I had been hiking on weekends with a local group of native plant enthusiasts. After I retired I joined the Columbia Basin Native Plant Society (CBNPS) and began hiking a couple times a week in the late Spring and Summer. The group was led by Laura Maier who was also our local contact for the CBNPS. In 2013 Laura forwarded me an invitation from Rare Care to organize a training session in Walla Walla.
TOM: 2009!
2. What made you interested in volunteering as a Rare Plant Monitor?
DARCY: The notion of understanding what I was looking at and to, perhaps, make a positive difference on forest management practices in the Blue Mountains held great appeal. Eight friends agreed to attend and we spent a day with Wendy Gibble trying hard to understand diagnostic features, random numbers and legal descriptions. For an English Literature Major with only a college level Geology course for science background, I was overwhelmed by the unfamiliarity of tools, vocabulary and technical writing. But, as a librarian, I was confident in my research abilities and access to contacts and local identification resources, historical accounts and maps. I love to do the research.
TOM: At the time I applied, I was working at Tadpole Haven Native Plants and doing restoration gardening on the side, and I wanted a broader perspective outside of my bubble to see uncommon plants in context and the places that support them. I think that I first heard about Rare Care in a gracious email response from Steve Erickson (Frosty Hollow Ecological Restoration) in 2008 when I was looking for uncommon plants as potentials for use in restoration settings.
3. What are tips for someone just starting as a Rare Plant Monitor? What skills and strategies help you find success?
DARCY: Take advantage of all the programming offered by Rare Care and the Washington Native Plant Society (WNPS). Stick to one plant species to begin with that is local. Branch out as you become more confident.
Lucky for me, a 2013 Study Weekend was held by Rare Care in the Columbia Basin in mid-May. I hung out for two wonderful days in 100+ degree, muggy weather on severely disturbed BLM lands with a couple of dozen others. ‘Newbies’ were grouped with the more experienced and taken through the process from studying to finding, to documenting and then, over cool drinks at a local brewery, writing up the report. The WNPS Weekend provided another opportunity for study, plant identification and rewarding personal connections. Again there was a mix of passionate amateurs and knowledgeable veterans. For my first assignment I picked the Calochortus macrocarpus var. maculosus or sagebrush lily. I was familiar with the more common Calochortus and decided how tough could it be to find the all white version. Also the lily is found from 1000 ft (Asotin County)to almost 5000 ft.(Columbia County) from early May to early July in similar terrain. So it was possible to follow the blooms up the snow line and overlap the checking of different locations. Since I was already in the vicinity, over the years, I felt confident in adding on Mimulus cusickii and Oenothera cespitosa var. marginata. Recently, I have concentrated on penstemons – primarily the Penstemon pennelianus or Blue Mountain penstemon but also enjoy finding others of the at least 9 species in the northern Blues. Now I find myself interested in alliums – more steep, rocky, slopes off remote ridges!
I enjoy researching the old reports we update. Who are these people that wrote them? How long did they spend in the area? What was going on in that part of the desert, forest, river when the plant was identified? When do the cattle come through? When was the last fire? Are they logging this month? The plants – their presence or absence – are part of a story of land use. Google Maps is great for finding remnants of old roads, trails or landmarks. The Umatilla National Forest website has road conditions, historical photographs from early 1900s and management studies. David Giblin, Joe Arnett, Walter Fertig and Paul Slichter publish plant lists, photographs, articles and Natural Heritage reports. The Burke Herbarium is my primary go to for background information and photos. It has images, descriptions, historical data on sightings, and updates to Field Guide to the Rare Plants of Washington and Flora of the Pacific Northwest. Those ‘Area Managers’ listed in your assignment cover letter are invaluable too for local conditions. I have great admiration for the Forest Service, State Parks, Fish and Wildlife and Bureau of Land Management field personnel I’ve met and checked in with annually. Those relationships can lead to accommodations for the night, guided tours on gated lands and invites for ride-alongs on related (and informative) botanical, management activities. Why? Because they appreciate Rare Care and its volunteer monitors.
Other must haves are a camera, magnifier, GPS, maps, notebook and binoculars. With an iPhone or iPad (and bars) it is possible to combine the former 5 functions plus download a plant identification app. and relevant pages of the FPN.
Fill out as much of the report as possible before you leave. Check in with your local contacts (BLM, Fish & Wildlife, Forest Service). Be prepared to return for missed information or actual bloom time. In the Blues, also be prepared for rattlesnakes and black bears. Report to local jurisdiction any abuse of the land (ATVs, militia target shooting, pesticide drift) in addition to putting it in your report. Stay off private property and take the initiative in introducing yourself to patrolling, nervous caretakers. Take a companion – even if just for driving or photography or counting or to go for help. Plus it’s just more fun having someone to share the experience.
TOM: I would encourage asking experienced members for help- using the directory contact info to find volunteers from old assignments. I spent two very soggy days on the Olympic Peninsula looking for an inland Woodwardia fimbriata in the exact area described, however, encroachment by conifers seemed to have considerably altered the landscape from the original description from the 1970’s. I found the original botanist’s (who had collected the voucher) contact info online and asked if he ever went back to the site and he was gracious in his response. He lived nearby and it had been gone for some time. David Giblin at the herbarium is also an amazing local resource and generous person. If it’s possible, try to get a login for pnwherbaria.org for more precise locations and higher quality scans of plant material to study up on habitat context and diagnostic features- also use the new Flora!
4. Do you have a favorite Rare Care memory? And what does it feel like to find your target plant?
DARCY: One (of many) exciting moment of discovery. Three of us were headed to locate the Calochortus macrocarpus var. maculosus in my friend’s (ex forest surveyor) truck. We travelled out Hard to Get to Ridge, an old cattle route, until, after removing a few trees that had fallen across the road, we ended at a barricade. Cheryl stayed with the truck while Jeff and I bush wacked down and around a butte and along another ridge for a couple of miles to the end and an overlook where we could see the Seven Devils in Idaho. No sign of the delicate fluttering Calochortus. We were tired, out of food, low on water and it was late afternoon in early July. I sat to rest while Jeff walked around the basalt outcropping for a private moment. He yells “They’re here!” And indeed they were. Hundreds on the steep southwest slope not the southeast slope we had already examined on our hands and knees! Such a feeling of satisfaction. It was a quick count with binoculars and multiple way findings and then a forced march back up the ridge, around the butte and return to the truck where our friend awaited with ample snacks and drinks.
TOM: Ha, I was going to list the first assignment as my favorite memory because it cultivated a certain kind of confidence in me. I felt pretty young and green when I started compared to my Rare Care peers. Sometimes just getting to the location of an M precision EO GPS point feels like a victory with all the location and access scouting, preparation at the herbarium (or iNaturalist, pnwherbaria.org, Paul Slichter’s site, etc), coordinating, and logistics that some of these assignments require. My first assignment was using an old hand drawn map of a population of Campanula lasiocarpa that a prolific amateur botanist and mountaineer’s estate had donated to Washington Natural Heritage Program when he passed away. He was all over the place. When we (Niall Dunne and I) thought we hit a dead end, we climbed parallel to a waterfall about 150′ and found the plant up another thousand feet in elevation along the same draw (very close to the peak of Mt. Index which we weren’t prepared to climb). Being able to use a key to differentiate between co-occurring Campanula at that time and being sure of the species when I found it really propelled me in this field and fueled my drive to learn more.
5. Anything else you want people to know?
DARCY: On monitoring assignment there may be no one else around. It is such a privilege to be able to be on the land with the feel of rocky soils under foot, the plants, the smell on the breeze, the horizon, the light, and memories of previous visits. Rare Care is my excuse for any day in the outdoors being a good one.
TOM: Not every assignment has to be crazy or challenging, it’s just my preference now since I’ve associated this kind of experience with Rare Care and I love it. It’s up to the volunteer to make the experience what they want it to be! Kayaking inter-island in the San Jaun Islands in early spring, or canoeing through the Salish Sea shipping lanes at dusk is much more variable than visiting a low elevation, roadside location but not necessarily any more rewarding depending on what you want to see!