record of an herbarium foray, part I
Aug. 23rd, 2010 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jinianThis year's Herbarium Foray was to the Malheur National Forest/Strawberry Wilderness area near Prairie City, OR.
15 July 2010
Long drive, around 10 hours from Seattle. P from Seattle to Pendleton, then me on the interminable (but gorgeous) stretch to John Day and beyond.
Turns out nontrivial to get on county road 62 in Prairie City. Turn on Main Street and save yourself extra exploration. Camped by the creek at Trout Farm, where running water provided a feeling of privacy and the rain of larvae and their output was no worse than anywhere else.
BATS over the small lake! Rattling grasses heralded a GIANT WATER BUG with huge, bladelike front legs. It was pumping heavily at the joint between head and thorax; maybe just eclosed. It didn't mind being spotlighted. Frogs did.
16 July 2010
Slept til 7:40, not deeply, but felt rested.
Collecting: the point of the trip! The first morning I joined the group heading to Road's End Trail, around 7000 feet. The area didn't seem terribly promising at first, but it got better as we went along. Everyone climbed the ridge, though that wasn't strictly necessary for collecting purposes.
Scary loose-rock slope! I collected Calandrinia here, but the specimen with the nice taproot got lost somewhere after I got it to the top of the slope in my shirt pocket and should've-been-safely into the plastic collection bags.
Even people smart enough not to go down on the slope could appreciate the view from the top, though.
Each site gets named after one of the people in the collecting party, and this one was named for me! It's just bookkeeping, but it was a thrill.
Lots of biting bugs despite using nasty spray. Shorts a mistake.
Lunchtime was at Indian Springs, lower down on the same road. Mostly similar flora, but wetter. Nettles, only male Thalictrum (everyone was confused), liverworts, not enough columbine to collect, larkspurs.
Three kinds of Mimulus, including great purple monkeyflower and M. nanus, which is indeed very small though not the smallest:
Sunburned knees; the sun moves while one sits pressing plants in the shade, and the shade thus moves too. Also, tree sap on shorts. (Later, the most effective way to remove that turned out to be canola oil followed by detergent to take the oil out.)
My fellow forayers are fairly well anonymized by hats here during the pressing process:
Brief stop on the way back to town yielded the answer to a mystery (what were those yellow rodlike plants? Castilleja.) and, for me, a mariposa lily.
Went to get gas (and ice cream) in town. MUD came off the back window of the van when washed. Yikes.
Saw a nighthawk over the lake, beautiful and sleek and curved, with white bars on its wings.
Felt very unhappy and awake at bedtime. Probably a little overextended from all the driving and sun. I drove on almost every trip, which I didn't mind except when everyone else was sleeping during the commute! We did far more driving than I'd expected in general, up to an hour from the camp to some of the sites, though it makes sense as a way to get lots of different floras from a small region.
15 July 2010
Long drive, around 10 hours from Seattle. P from Seattle to Pendleton, then me on the interminable (but gorgeous) stretch to John Day and beyond.
Turns out nontrivial to get on county road 62 in Prairie City. Turn on Main Street and save yourself extra exploration. Camped by the creek at Trout Farm, where running water provided a feeling of privacy and the rain of larvae and their output was no worse than anywhere else.
BATS over the small lake! Rattling grasses heralded a GIANT WATER BUG with huge, bladelike front legs. It was pumping heavily at the joint between head and thorax; maybe just eclosed. It didn't mind being spotlighted. Frogs did.
16 July 2010
Slept til 7:40, not deeply, but felt rested.
Collecting: the point of the trip! The first morning I joined the group heading to Road's End Trail, around 7000 feet. The area didn't seem terribly promising at first, but it got better as we went along. Everyone climbed the ridge, though that wasn't strictly necessary for collecting purposes.
Scary loose-rock slope! I collected Calandrinia here, but the specimen with the nice taproot got lost somewhere after I got it to the top of the slope in my shirt pocket and should've-been-safely into the plastic collection bags.
Even people smart enough not to go down on the slope could appreciate the view from the top, though.
Each site gets named after one of the people in the collecting party, and this one was named for me! It's just bookkeeping, but it was a thrill.
Lots of biting bugs despite using nasty spray. Shorts a mistake.
Lunchtime was at Indian Springs, lower down on the same road. Mostly similar flora, but wetter. Nettles, only male Thalictrum (everyone was confused), liverworts, not enough columbine to collect, larkspurs.
Three kinds of Mimulus, including great purple monkeyflower and M. nanus, which is indeed very small though not the smallest:
Sunburned knees; the sun moves while one sits pressing plants in the shade, and the shade thus moves too. Also, tree sap on shorts. (Later, the most effective way to remove that turned out to be canola oil followed by detergent to take the oil out.)
My fellow forayers are fairly well anonymized by hats here during the pressing process:
Brief stop on the way back to town yielded the answer to a mystery (what were those yellow rodlike plants? Castilleja.) and, for me, a mariposa lily.
Went to get gas (and ice cream) in town. MUD came off the back window of the van when washed. Yikes.
Saw a nighthawk over the lake, beautiful and sleek and curved, with white bars on its wings.
Felt very unhappy and awake at bedtime. Probably a little overextended from all the driving and sun. I drove on almost every trip, which I didn't mind except when everyone else was sleeping during the commute! We did far more driving than I'd expected in general, up to an hour from the camp to some of the sites, though it makes sense as a way to get lots of different floras from a small region.
