For my internship project this year, I am cataloguing various specimens of plants and creating a report with the associated information that I need to include with the plant specimens. The goal of this project is to not only improve my understanding of the native plants that I will be working with, but also to jump-start the entire internship program for the SDBG. This is to say that future interns for the botanic garden will be using the information that I gather as well as the methods that I test out to catalogue more native plants. There are many parts to this project as several different types of data need to be collected on the plants that we take. The first part involves creating herbarium vouchers for each of the plants that I would like to catalogue. An herbarium voucher is a pressed cutting of a plant specimen that is glued to a piece of cardstock in a way that illustrates the characteristics of the plant species. As seen here, these vouchers also contain an information card that denotes all of the vital notation to locate the plant that the clipping was taken from in the future. This information card is the second part of the project. I must take notes on the soil composition, slope, light, and importantly the associated species (other species that are growing in the vicinity of the plant). Lastly and most importantly, is the propagation portion of the project. Having pressed records of plants is great for studying the characteristics of the species and for posterity, but the true public importance of this project is the "living library" of propagated native plants that I am attempting to grow. A large part of my work every day is to prepare several different types of propagules from native plants. Basically, I take cuttings (as seen in the previous post) or seeds (many of which are older than I am) and plant them in a way that will create new roots and essentially a whole new plant.
This project will hopefully not only help the botanic garden with their internship program, but it will also work towards restoration projects at the Cottonwood Creek Park.
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February 2020
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