BOISE, Id – Restore and rehabilitate. Those are the goals of a national program, designed to collect and store thousands of plant seeds, in case they’re needed to replenish a depleted landscape. Over ten years, “Seeds of Success” has gathered more than 12-thousand types of plants. Some of those plants come from Idaho, thanks to one woman who works to preserve these tiny pieces of the future.
Ann DeBolt knows her plants. She stands next to a large group of rock pillars, surrounded by trees and bushes inside the Idaho Botanical Garden in Boise…and points up.
Ann DeBolt “See that rooftop of our gathering place, that little green roof, that’s Wooly Sunflower and some sedums and some native grasses, I’ve collected all of those.”
She gathered the seeds for those plants as part of the “Seeds of Success” Native Seed Collection Program at the Garden. This is DeBolt’s second year with the program. It’s a collaboration with the Bureau of Land Management to gather seeds from native plants in Idaho and Oregon.
Ann DeBolt “People look at the landscape maybe in some of these arid zones, these arid habitats and think that there’s nothing alive out there, but when you get out, it’s really quite beautiful and interesting.”
Seeds of Success is a national program that the BLM began ten years ago. The agency partners with entities such as the Chicago Botanic Garden or the Idaho Botanical Garden to hire seed collectors. Some seeds go to a long-term storage facility for preservation. Some seeds are grown at Boise’s Garden for the BLM, to restore overgrazed or fire-damaged habitat on federal land. And some of the seeds become part of the Garden itself. Julia Rundberg is the Executive Director of the Garden.
Julia Rundberg “Having those rare plants that sometimes struggle depending on the conditions out in their natural settings, having them protected and preserved here is something that we Gardens all across the nations want to do, including the Idaho Botanical Garden.”
DeBolt and two assistants gather the seeds of a few dozen plants each year, plants like Biscuitroot. She pulls the giant, and rather ugly, root out of a paper bag and lays it on her office floor.
Ann DeBolt “…this is only part of the root.”
Biscuitroot is a member of the carrot and parsley family. She found this specimen in the Boise Foothills. DeBolt’s two decades of work as a botanist means she can easily locate plants like BiscuitRoot , Hawk’s Beard or even the rare Aase’s (oss-ees) onion. Today she’s searching for the Rabbit Brush plant, at the edge of the Boise Foothills.
She opens a large paper grocery bag, pulls some seeds off the plant, and sticks them inside.
Ann DeBolt “And then we write on the bag, the date, the species, the location, and then how many plants you’re collecting that seed from.”
Each bag of seeds must be documented including where the plant comes from, nearby plants and the elevation. This information is used later on, if an area needs to be reseeded.
Ann DeBolt “That’s the beauty of putting it in the seed bank, then if they decide they want it grown, we have all the data, we know where it came from, so that we can get it back to that similar type of site.”
This year, DeBolt and her team found 28 species of plants in Idaho and 20 in Oregon. Some of DeBolt’s seeds will be grown into plants, and incorporated into the Garden. Last year, DeBolt’s seeds were part of the 2700 plants collected nationally by the Seeds of Success program.
Copyright 2011 BSPR
