Season Accomplishments: Native Seed Increase

As a quick refresher, the Research and Conservation Department has launched a new Native Seed Increase project this year in partnership with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Motivated by the need to increase our native seed stock so we can enhance the effectiveness of our natural area restoration efforts, the project entails growing out native plant species in an agricultural setting and trialing different cultivation and harvesting strategies. Our two main goals are to build detailed growing protocols that can be given to commercial growers of these species and to produce native seed stock in the process. The BLM gave us seed from four species to start with: Heterotheca villosa, Sphaeralcea coccinea, Stanleya pinnata and Phacelia crenulata — three perennials and one annual.  

With the first season of this project wrapping up, we look back on what we were able to accomplish. We expected that this first season would act as a bit of a start-up season, mainly encompassing the growing out of the plants in the greenhouse, the transplanting of those individuals into our field plots and the ongoing maintenance to get them established. We had our sights on testing different early-stage stratification and germination strategies. However, I am happy to say that we accomplished a significant amount more!  

So far, we have had two major wins. First, we have gotten the bulk of three out of our four species — H. villosa, S. coccinea and P. crenulata — to flower. This is wild, particularly for the perennials, because with all the stress that the plants go through from transplant to establishment, it is expected that they will devote most of their energy to root and shoot growth this first season as they acclimate. With this accomplishment has also come the creation of a frequently utilized pollinator weigh station, and we have seen a significantly diverse range of visitors to our plots these last few months. Second, we have gone another step further and gotten each of these three species to produce seed in some amount as well, with H. villosa and S. coccinea producing quite significantly!  

I think it’s safe to say that we’re making substantial progress toward achieving our two main project goals and are even accomplishing other side quests along the way. Now it's time to clean our harvested seeds and begin planning for next season.