No.40 Summer 2013 LASTHENIA NEWSLETTER OF THE DAVIS BOTANICAL SOCIETY FIELD PROJECTS KEEP THE HERBARIUM BUSY AND FUNDED! This past year (2013) has been a good We started the Clear Lake State Park one for getting outside into the field, project in January, with a preliminary away from our indoor herbarium visit with the park’s Environmental database projects. In the spring, we of- Scientist, Jim Dempsey, who showed us fered to work (gratis) on a preliminary convenient access routes and pro- plant list for Clear Lake State Park, vided maps. An undergraduate, Karen which is on the north slopes of Mount Whitestone, came with us to begin an Konocti in Lake County, about two undergraduate research project to map hours (by car) northwest of Davis. We one or more rare plants in the park. have worked on a number of plant lists Karen and I returned twice in February for the California Dept. of Parks and to continue mapping the rare Konocti Recreation since 2006. The department manzanita (Arctostaphylos manzanita doesn’t have much of a budget for this ssp. elegans); Karen presented her find- Ellen Dean and Karen Whitestone at Clear sort of thing, and so they often need a ings on this plant at an undergraduate Lake State Park (with Clear Lake in the back- plant list, and their properties are often research symposium in April. ground). Photo: J. Dempsey a convenient place to take students to In March, I traveled to the park complete their spring plant collection. with a group of Davis Botanical Society volunteers and Collection Manager Jean Shepard for a general collecting expedi- tion. Then I took two more trips in April THE CONSERVATORY’S PLANT LADY and May with 16 UC Davis students (15 interns and one volunteer, Marisol The Botanical Conservatory’s Staff Gonzalez). Horticulturalist, Marlene Simon, has By the end of the quarter, we had col- become locally famous! In September lected nearly 240 specimens in the park 2013 Marlene began a regular stint on and documented three rare plants. With the television show Good Day, Sacra- the help of herbarium volunteer Kate mento as The Plant Lady, the show’s Mawdsley and undergraduate Nathan resident horticultural advisor. She has Gonzalez, we combined our collection been a regular addition to the show Sat- urday mornings between 7 am and 11 continued on page 4 am, answering viewer questions about problems with indoor and outdoor cul- tivated plants. She is an articulate plant IN THIS ISSUE expert, able to field many types of plant Field Projects .................................. 1 questions, even when she isn’t given the questions ahead of time. If you want to find previous episodes of The Plant The Plant Lady ................................ 1 Lady on the internet, here are two links you can try. Hopefully, they will still Society Profiles................................ 3 work by the time this issue of Lasthenia is in your hands. Field Trips ....................................... 5 http://gooddaysacramento.cbslocal.com/video/9209962-plant-questions- answered/ The Cedars ...................................... 6 http://gooddaysacramento.cbslocal.com/video/9234553-ask-the-plant-lady- Student Grants ................................ 7 pt-3/ 1 CONSERVATORY UPDATE Where does the money go? If you’ve ever wondered how the annual Conservatory Wish List allocation from Davis Botanical Society member dues, interest from the Label-Making Needs: Conservatory Endowment, and gifts to Software ($500) current operations funds have helped Desktop Computer ($2000) the Botanical Conservatory, read on. Printer ($1000) And while you are doing so, keep in mind that the Conservatory has new BOG Project Needs: curatorial needs that are explained at Soil amendments ($4000) the end of this article and summarized And more BOG materials….. in the wish list to the right. ($4000) square footage, the multi-level benches The new bench arrangement in the succulent have brought our plants further into room. Photo: E. Sandoval the third dimension and lower, so more of our visitors, especially the young, the need and their ability to build the can see more of the plants and less of solutions. Ian was also supported by the floor. I am no longer afraid visitors Gifford Cycad Garden donations, and will succumb to claustrophobia! We many visitors have noted his skilled have also used some of this funding for pruning of the plants around Storer Hall increased student staff to transplant, and the Sciences Laboratory Building. prune, propagate, and maintain the The juniper bushes at the west end of collection. Storer are now interesting sculptures Two of our skilled student rather than view blocking blobs! The succulent room in spring 2013. The walls between the old rooms are long gone employees, Federico Lopez Borghesi, What’s next? We’ve completed about and the benches are almost finished. a recent Plant Biology undergrad, 85% of the grading and recontouring of Photo: E. Sandoval and Ian D. R. Baker, International Ag. an area northwest of the Conservatory, Development, were paid in part by DBS- slated to become the Biological Orchard The Conservatory has seen a originated funds to accomplish major and Gardens (BOG, for short). This steady 6% increase in the number of overhauls of the benches in our cool project will include a large area of fruit tours and participants over the last fern rooms and what used to be two and berry trees and bushes, as well as couple of years, and we expect more desert rooms. The improvements were areas for Mediterranean and California as enrollment across campus increases. a collaboration between what I saw as native plants. This past year we led more than 4,100 Needed soon are additional irrigation individuals on 157 tours, guided mostly equipment and soil amendment by Marlene Simon, staff horticulturalist, materials, with an estimated cost and myself. (I could interject here of $4,000 to $7,000. We hope to that we would be ecstatic to find some be able to plant in late 2014, if the major donations for a new and bigger infrastructure is complete. Dan Isidor, Conservatory, but in the meantime... ). in the development office of the College In order to accommodate this growth, of Biological Sciences, has helped especially as a result of increased with funding for the BOG, but more is enrollment in Intro Biology 2C, we’ve needed. used the funding sources listed earlier Inside the Conservatory, a new to make a variety of improvements software package to produce plant to the ways plants are displayed and labels, with the computer and printer to changes to the bench layouts in and use it, is at the top of the wish list. I’d be around our growing facilities. happy to talk with anyone who would One of the biggest improvements like more information about either of inside the Conservatory occurred in these projects. You can contact me at our two succulent rooms, now one [email protected] or 530-752- continuous room since we removed 0569. the former dividing wall. The aisles are now wider and traffic flow is much E. Sandoval & K. Mawdsley improved thanks to the replacement Interns Marisol Gonzalez and Surbhi Cho- of the wooden benches with tiered phla enjoying displaying an black plastic benches in a figure eight. Amorphophallus corm, Spring, 2013. Although we’ve lost some bench top Photo: E. Sandoval 2 RECENT GIFTS Conservatory Endowment Herbarium Operations Davis Botanical Society Student Eric Conn Bureau of Land Management Grants Fund Ernesto Sandoval California Native Plant Society Michael Barbour Maxine Schmalenberger Friends of the Davis Library & Valerie Whitworth Katherine Mawdsley Michelle Barefoot Herbarium Endowment In Memory of James Neilson: & Luis Perez-Grau Chris Bronny Harold & Roberta Bacheller Eric Conn Mick Canevari Griffin Greenhouse Supplies, Inc. Brenda Grewell & Steve Kidner Eric Conn William & Jean Heflin E. Eric Grissell Joseph DiTomaso Dianne McQuaid Marie Jasieniuk & Frank Roe Lewis Feldman James & Rosella McQuaid Terence & Judith Murphy Brenda Grewell Henri & Dianne Pellissier Thomas & Ann Rost Gordon & Delia Harrington Maxine Schmalenberger Charles, Jessica, & Henry Hughes Conservatory Gifts in Kind Roger Willmarth Charlotte Kimball Maurice Levin Julie Knorr Marjorie March (in memory of June Herbarium Gifts in Kind McCaskill) Gerald Dickinson Sue Nichol Marcel Rejmanek Robert Preston Estate of Barbara & John Hopper Maxine Schmalenberger John Randall Kenneth and Shirley Tucker Roger Willmarth Carol Witham Thank you for Conservatory Operations Kelly Ratliff your support! SOCIETY PROFILES Marie Jasieniuk Marie Jasieniuk, 2013-14 Davis forests of eastern Canada to study Botanical Society president, now Oxalis montana for her doctorate. studies weeds in agroecosystems, Post-doctoral opportunities led her especially invasive plants of first to Manitoba and evolutionary and horticultural origin, but she has genetic studies of herbicide resistance roots, so to speak, in herbaria. As in weeds and then south to Montana an undergraduate at the University State University in Bozeman, where she of Saskatchewan, the herbarium worked on modeling crop yield losses hired her for one of those life- and the ecology of invasive plants in changing summer jobs: she and natural areas.. While recounting this another student took a camper with history, Marie gave a most nuanced a canoe on top and followed the reply to a request for her definition crew building a road into the boreal of a “weed:” it is, she said, “context forest, collecting and documenting dependent.” the plants along the route for the Marie came to UC Davis in 2002, to herbarium’s collection. Her interest what is now the Dept. of Plant Sciences. in plants had begun even earlier as She co-teaches the graduate core course she botanized on her parents’ farm in in Plant Biology as well as Science and Saskatchewan. Society 12, Plants and Society 12, and Marie Jasieniuk in the field. Marie’s master’s degree research Bio Sci 2B, which introduces students to Photo courtesy of the subject.