Sego Lily Summer/Fall 2016 39 (3) Summer/Fall 2016 (volume 39 number 3) National Park Service Centennial Issue In this issue: Unidentified Flowering Object . 2 UNPS News. 3 Chapter News and Events . 4 Utah’s National Parks and Monuments: A Century of Plant Conservation . 6 Noteworthy Discoveries Rare Plant Hunting in Eskdale . 21 New Flatsedge Reports for Utah . 22 Shivwits milkvetch (Astragalus ampullarioides) is a leafy, hollow- stemmed perennial with stems up to 2 feet tall and an elongated inflores- cence of white or creamy, pea-shaped flowers. It is listed at Endangered un- der the US Endangered Species Act and is restricted to barren, purplish- brown clay soils of the Chinle and Moenave formations at less than 10 sites in southwestern Utah. The larg- est population is protected in Zion Na- tional Park, where NPS staff have been monitoring the population and learning how to cultivate the species for more than 10 years. Photo by Cheryl Decker. Copyright 2016 UT Native Plant Society. All Rights Reserved. Utah Native Plant Society Committees Website: For late-breaking news, the Conservation: Bill King & Tony Frates UNPS store, the Sego Lily archives, Chap- Education: Ty Harrison ter events, sources of native plants, Horticulture: Maggie Wolf the digital Utah Rare Plant Field Guide, Important Plant Areas: Mindy Wheeler and more, go to unps.org. Many thanks Invasive Weeds: Susan Fitts to Xmission for sponsoring our web- Publications: Larry Meyer site. Rare Plants: Officers Scholarship/Grants: Therese Meyer Sego Lily Editor: Walter Fertig President: Robert Fitts (Utah ([email protected]). Co) Chapters and Chapter Presidents Vice President: Cache: Michael Piep Copyright 2016 Utah Native Plant Society. Treasurer: Celeste Kennard (Utah Co), Canyonlands: Diane Ackerman & Sarah All Rights Reserved Secretary: Cathy King (Salt Lake Co.) Topp Board Chair: Bill King (Salt Lake Co.) Cedar City: Matt Ogburn The Sego Lily is a quarterly publication of Fremont: Marianne Breeze Orton the Utah Native Plant Society, a 501(c)(3) UNPS Board: Susan Fitts (Utah Co) Ty Manzanita: not-for-profit organization dedicated to Harrison (Salt Lake Co), Kipp Lee (Salt Mountain: Mindy Wheeler conserving and promoting stewardship Lake Co), Larry Meyer (Salt Lake Co), Salt Lake: Cathy King of our native plants. Therese Meyer (Salt Lake Co), Raven Southwestern/Bearclaw Poppy: Reitstetter (Tooele), Leila Shultz (Cache Utah Valley: Robert Fitts Utah Native Plant Society, PO Box 520041, Co), Dave Wallace (Cache Co), Blake Salt Lake City, UT, 84152-0041. Email: Wellard (Davis Co) [email protected] ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Utah Native Plant Society Chapters Unidentified Flowering Object This month’s UFO comes from Jim Case of Cedar City. It looks like a blossom, but might not be a true flower. Can you tell what it is? The Spring Unidentified Flowering Object was (Polemonium micranthum) photographed by Bill Gray in the Salt Lake Valley. This annual member of the phlox family (Polemoniaceae) is found in sagebrush communities and disturbed sites in northern Utah and sporadically westward to British Columbia and California. It is also found in Argentina and Chile, where the sticky seeds (when wetted the seed coat turns gooey) may have hitched a ride from migrating birds. Have a UFO to share? Send it in! - W. Fertig 2 Sego Lily Summer/Fall 2016 39 (3) UNPS News Annual Meeting: The 2016 UNPS annual mem- bers meeting will be on Saturday, November 5, from 1-4 PM. UNPS President Robert Fitts will make an opening presentation in honor of the 100th anniversary of our National Parks, followed by a special guest speaker (TBA). The meeting will be hosted by the Utah Valley Chapter and held at the Provo Library (550 North Uni- versity Avenue, Provo). As always, it will be a New World-themed potluck. For more information, please contact Cathy King (801-867-3595) or consult the UNPS website. Moving On: Utah Native Plant Society President Jason Alexander announced in early July that he would be leaving his job as curator of the Utah Valley Univer- sity herbarium and heading to California to be the digi- tal database manager for the University of California- Berkeley herbarium. Jason will be overseeing the Con- sortium of California Herbaria website, which serves data on the distribution of two million plant specimens from 35 herbaria in California (check it out at ucjeps.berkeley.edu/consortium/). While this is good career-wise for Jason, it means Above: Jason Alexander posing in April with monstrous Geraea that he is relinquishing his many duties with UNPS. In canescens and Camissonia brevipes (due to the El Niño rains) addition to being President, Jason has been the co- near Tecopa Hot Springs in California. Photo by Jason’s mom. president of the Utah Valley Chapter with Robert Fitts the Indiana University herbarium, where I will be for the past several years and chair of the UNPS Rare developing herbarium databases for the Consortium of Plant Committee since 2014. As committee chair, Jason Midwest Herbaria. My work commitments are making has been responsible for organizing the annual rare it increasingly difficult to keep up with the production plant conference in March and for working with the schedule of the Sego Lily, and so it is time to turn the rare plant committee on ranking the conservation pri- newsletter over to someone else—preferably someone ority of plant species in Utah (which Jason summarized actually residing in Utah! I hope to continue contribut- in Volume 3 of Calochortiana, the UNPS research jour- ing an article from time to time, and to continue the nal, this past spring). annual or bi-annual production of Calochortiana. It has We all wish Jason and his wife Ann Marie all the best been a lot of fun producing the newsletter this past dec- in their new Bay area adventure. Former Vice Presi- ade and being on the UNPS board the past 12 years and dent Robert Fitts is the new UNPS President until the I’m grateful for the opportunity to have met and next election this fall. The board is currently soliciting worked with so many great plant enthusiasts from potential new members to fill Jason’s vacancy (and oth- across Utah. - Walter Fertig ers) on the statewide board. A replacement is still needed for the chair of the rare plant committee. Serv- ing on the UNPS board and its various committees is a great way to help promote the conservation and educa- tion mission of UNPS and to work with nice, like- minded plant lovers. If you have time and interest, please contact UNPS and volunteer to help the state board, or assist your own local chapter. After ten years at the helm of the Sego Lily, I have also decided to move on. Three years ago my wife Laura and I relocated to Phoenix, where I took a job as the digital collections manager and lichen curator at Above: Your umbel editor, modeling a Cocklebur poodle in Arizona State University. I have now taken a new posi- Zion NP in 2010. Photo by Cheryl Decker. tion as the Assistant Curator and database manager for 3 Utah Native Plant Society Chapter News and Events UNPS Field Trip to Onaqui: The Salt Lake Moab, collecting data from the Colorado Plateau. Chapter of the Utah Native Plant Society enjoyed a The installation at the Onaqui site was impressive, presentation this past spring by Maria Gaetani and includes a massive tower fitted with scientific about NEON—the National Ecological Observatory instruments located at multiple levels, one close to Network (www.neonscience.org). Several of us the ground and the highest position 20 feet off the were so intrigued that we wanted to see the ground. The instruments are taking meteorologi- Onaqui NEON site for ourselves cal and soil measurements. A long gravel pathway (www.neonscience.org/science-design/field-sites/ leads away from the tower with multiple smaller onaqui-ault). Raven Reitsttetter volunteered to instrument panels collecting other data on site to lead a field trip to support plots the site in Rush Val- where certain ley, Utah on the 4th plant and animal of July. species are being We had a grand monitored on a time and the field scheduled basis. trip was informa- The area sur- tive, mostly because rounding the Raven is especially NEON location was interested in man- not in a healthy aging native ecosys- native condition, tems, particularly but was thick with those that have cheatgrass and been overgrazed, sagebrush and few and to restore them native plants. Ra- to their native state. ven explained how He is a chemist em- shrubs like Ar- ployed by Dugway temisia tridentata Proving Grounds, and Juniperus os- but said that he had teosperma that be- also earned a degree in Above: Raven Reitsttetter (far right) at SageStep crested come dominant, or grow in Ecology and Rangeland wheatgrass site.. Photo by Elise Erler. a decadent state, can pre- Management, His personal clude understory growth, focus is on the impact of soil biology on the inva- leaving the soil open to erosion and further endan- sion of cheatgrass, Bromus tectorum, in the Great gering the healthy state of native plants. He talked Basin Desert. Raven is also a member of the Board a bit about how fire suppression, over the long of Directors of UNPS. haul, has been bad for the ecosystem, since wild- He gave us an overview of the cheatgrass issue fires naturally thinned out dominant shrub popu- in the Great Basin in Utah and Nevada and some of lations. the research being done to control it. He men- There are test measures currently being taken tioned that Susan Meyer of the Forest Service by the BLM and the Forest Service to see if there Shrub Lab in Provo is developing a fungus to at- are any methods that could address the issue.