Getting Seedy: collecting native seeds for pollinator habitat restoration
by Melody Friend, Vesper Meadow volunteer
Thinking about Collecting Native Seeds?
Collecting native seed for restoration and encouraging pollinators can be helpful and rewarding. We have been providing community opportunities to take part via our “Walk, Weed, and Seed” volunteer events - and having a great time sharing in the experience together. Here are some ways to ensure that you do it in a good way to maximize viable seeds and not deplete the site.
Choosing your target plants depends on your purpose for collecting and dictates important variables to your collection process. Collecting for restoring a special location for instance at Vesper Meadow, may require specific methods and such things as site location information and dates of each collection. If your intention is to develop a food source, restore a location other than where the seeds are collected, or specifically to encourage pollinators, it is important to study the plants’ growing requirements before beginning your collecting.
After you know why and what you want to collect, you should definitely research your location choices even before you start the monitoring process! There are restrictions and places where seed collecting is totally off-limit such as Research Natural Areas, sensitive or federally listed plant sites, or other environmentally sensitive areas. Collecting where there are noxious or invasive species are not your best collection sites either as you may be inadvertently propagating what you do not want to spread around!
Monitoring and Timing is important as well. Once you have establish it is safe and permitted to collect at potential sites and you have establish what and why you re collecting, your efforts will be rewarded if you check sites frequently to see when plants are ready to be collected from. Some plants of the same kind may be ready while others are yet to be at a mature seed stage. Some types of plants can have weeks of seed collecting potential while others may have only a few days! So do little research ahead and know your plants seeding schedule and how to identify what mature seeds look like.
At Vesper Meadow, we have have a few different micro-habitats that we collect from and make sure to match when redistributing seeds in restoration sites.
Firstly, it is worthy to note that there are a few primary issues that we are addressing for restoration of the native plant community after 150+ years of impacts: (1) increased drying of the wet meadow as impacted by irrigation infrastructure and intentional removal of riparian shrub vegetation (2) conversion of meadow hillsides to nonnative livestock-feed grass that increasingly invade large areas of ground (3) invasion by noxous weeds from surrounding lands impacted by timber harvest and understory degradation.
At Vesper Meadow, we collect seeds and redistribute in habitat zones:
Riparian: We have been collecting Lupine and Spirea from the riparian area long the creek, and saving them in cold storage for when we initiate broad scale creek restoration. It is also worth noting that in addition to seed collection, we are conducting continuous fall plantings of willow stakes - cuttings of willow branches that easily take root in the wet soils of the creek bed.
In the lower, wettest parts of the meadow we are targeting some species that are important to pollinators like Mule’s ear (Wyethia angustifolia, belonging to the sunflower family) and the native grass Deschampsia cespitosa - both important species to the endangered Klamath Mardon Skipper butterfly. We have also been focusing on native food plants found in the wet meadow like Camas (Camassia quamash) and Yampah (Perideridia gardneri).
On the lower hillsides of the meadow, we have been collecting from Roemer’s fescus grass (Festuca roemeri), another important grass for Klamath Mardon Skipper, as well as for nesting habitat of the endangered Oregon Vesper Sparrow. In this habitat zone we have also been collecting native plants of high medicinal value, like Yaorrow (Achilles millifolium) and Fern-leaf biscuitroot (Lomatium dissectum). Other pollinator favorites that we are working with include various Buckwheats (Eriogonums), Nettleleaf Horsemint (Agastache urticifolia), Cinquefoil (Potentilla gracilis), and several others.
Stay tuned for some seeding events happening later this fall!