You may have heard by now about exciting changes happening with Rare Care and UW Botanic Gardens. UW Botanic Gardens and the Arboretum Foundation have joined together under a 501(c)3 organization called Seattle Botanic Gardens. Seattle Botanic Gardens will remain closely affiliated with the University of Washington and continue UW Botanic Gardens’ role of managing the Center for Urban Horticulture and Washington Park Arboretum plant collections, facilities, and programs. 

Seed collecting truly highlights the collective (pun not intended) nature of our botanical community. This spring and summer, we completed 43 rare plant seed collections that were made possible through years of collaboration with the Washington Natural Heritage Program, state and federal partners, and Rare Care volunteers. Other people outside of these partnerships survey, collect herbarium specimens, and make observations without knowing what plant conservation they may enable. 

Whether it’s making rare seed collections or monitoring rare plant reintroductions, my summer as a field technician for Rare Care has been spent jumping from one project to the next. Despite the ever-changing nature of field work, one thing remained constant: every two weeks, Allie Howell and I would drive three hours to water an outplanted population of the low-growing, yellow-flowered Umtanum desert buckwheat (Eriogonum codium). 

Rare Care monitors traveled here, there, and everywhere this field season, from the Olympic to the Blue Mountains, river valleys to alpine peaks. All in the pursuit of surveying rare plants.
Teamwork, determination, and luck went in to finding annuals this year. Joanna Long, Sarah Stolar, and Tiffani Manteuffel-Ross created a rotating schedule to try to relocate a population of white fairy-poppy (Meconella oregana) in Island County that had not been found the last two years. 

A seed’s journey from its mother plant to long-term storage in the Miller Seed Vault involves many steps. As our volunteers know, locating wild populations and ensuring optimal timing for collecting ripe seeds takes careful planning, and cleaning them requires close attention to detail. But for Kylie Gates, a fourth-year University of Washington student and Rare Care volunteer, once all the seed collecting and processing is finished, her work can begin. 

 
The weekend of June 5th-8th, 14 Rare Care volunteers traveled to the Okanogan Highlands in the Tonasket Ranger District of the Colville National Forest and surrounding Bureau of Land Management land for our annual Monitoring Weekend. Almost every person found and surveyed our target species for the weekend – northern blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium septentrionale). Six of the ten populations surveyed were larger in size than reported in the 90’s, some 10-100 times larger. 

We expected this survey season to be difficult with a hot and dry spring and summer causing shorter and earlier windows for finding rare plants. However, our volunteers, ever dedicated to the cause, rose to the challenge.
Sarah Stolar knew success would require arduous effort to reach a fern-leaf goldthread (Coptis aspleniifolia) population after Rare Care’s last three attempts couldn’t reach the location. 

Jacob Maki was Rare Care’s 2025 seasonal field technician. Maki started as a volunteer monitor with Rare Care in 2021. After graduating with a degree in plant biology from the University of Washington last year, he decided to take a stab at a full season of Rare Care.
Assisting with seed collections, outplantings, and monitoring, he traveled across the state from the Olympic Mountains to the basalt cliffs of the Columbia River, and even to channeled scablands in Odessa, WA. 

In August, Rare Care Program Manager Wendy Gibble attended the Plant Conservation Leadership Summit at the Atlanta Botanic Gardens. Over 100 leaders from 64 botanic gardens and affiliated organizations across the US convened to strategize how to advance plant conservation objectives in this new environment of severely reduced federal funding. Nearly all organizations have been impacted by the termination of federal grants and/or the lack of new funding opportunities. 

Cyndy Smith-Kuebel was indoctrinated into the outdoor life from day one. Growing up in Western WA, her father found Cyndy an eager student of scientific plant names and quizzed her up and down trails as they hiked in the Cascade Mountains. This sparked a life-long interest in botany and plant ecology that she pursued at the US Forest Service Cle Elum Ranger District.