Category: Blog

January Native Plant of the Month: Lemmon’s needlegrass

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Winter is when native bunchgrasses shine. After other understory plants lose their leaves and flowers, perennial bunchgrasses such as Lemmon’s needlegrass flare out from the earth while extending their root systems deep underground.

Lemmon’s needlegrass resprouting in the Agate Desert (Rogue Valley) after a prescribed burn. Photo credit: Teresa Fernandez

Lemmon’s needlegrass (Achnatherum lemmonii), bears long, needle-like awns extending from either side of the seed, a feature which can make this plant unpalatable to livestock. However, birds and small mammals have no problem plucking the nutritious seed from between the awns. Deer and elk also browse on Lemmon’s needlegrass, while moths and butterflies nest at the base, making this a key species for wildlife.

This attractive bunchgrass is popular as both a landscaping plant and in habitat restoration. It needs little maintenance once established and stays green late into the summer. It is an essential component of oak savannah and prairie habitat and, as shown in the photo, resprouts readily after a burn. There is even a local subspecies, Achnatherum lemmonii subsp. pubescens, that is adapted to serpentine soils.

Rogue Native Plant Partnership: 2020 Was No Match

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Between moving to a dedicated seed storage facility, adapting to COVID and an unprecedented wildfire season, and stepping back to plan for the next five years, it’s been an eventful year for the Rogue Native Plant Partnership! Despite the challenges of the year, our partners have remained committed to the cause and the support from the community has been terrific. Read on for some highlights and photos from the past 12 months!

Volunteers collecting native grass seed at the Rogue River Preserve in July 2020

Big Year for Volunteers – Thank You!

In masks and with mobile hand washing stations, volunteers showed up in force this year to collect seed and put native plant plugs in the ground. RNPP held a number of successful events, including:

  • Two seed collection events, or “seed blitzes”. The first was held in June at BLM’s French Flat site near Cave Junction. Volunteers collected wildflower seeds like selfheal (Prunella vulgaris) and California oatgrass (Danothonia californica) that are uniquely adapted to grow on the serpentine soils at this site. 
  • A July seed blitz at Rogue River Preserve, where volunteers gathered seeds from the delightful wooly-headed clover (Trifolium eriocephalum) as well as four other native forbs and grasses.
  • Two planting days held in partnership with the BLM at Upper Table Rocks – one in early spring and one just a few weeks ago in December. With several volunteers and a handful of BLM botanists leading small teams, we hiked out to sites where burn piles from brush thinning had left lovely ash piles (with gorgeous views of Mt. McLaughlin). Between the two events, over 150 native grass and forb plugs were put in the ground to enhance the native oak savannah habitat. 
  • Several milkweed pod collection events at J. Herbert Stone nursery this late summer and fall. Braving the smoke and heat, intrepid volunteers collected hundreds of pounds of pods, which will be tumbled and cleaned to separate the milkweed seeds from fluff, and used for plantings that will support our migratory monarchs and other pollinator species. 
RNPP volunteers gain hands-on experience with planting native plant plugs and wild harvesting seeds. To add yourself to our volunteer list, use the Contact Us page!

Woody Species for Fire Response

In 2019, an RNPP subcommittee was formed to create a short list of “most wanted” woody plant species (shrubs and trees), which are highly desirable for restoration projects but difficult to source locally. It was decided that contracting with an expert botanical collector would be the best way to obtain these seeds, and in fall of 2020 we had our first delivery of seeds from Siskiyou Biosurvey. 

Prunus virginiana seed
Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana) was one of the species collected through this initiative, and is currently being grown out so that this fast-growing riparian tree may be used in restoration work.

Acting quickly, we were able get these seeds cleaned and turned around and sold to growers, so that they can be grown out over the winter and spring to become viable plants that will be used for restoration. After the fires that ripped through the Rogue Valley in September, growers and nurseries are expecting an unprecedented demand for shrub and tree plugs.

Plant and Seed Sales

A big part of the Partnership mission is to get native plants in the hands of restoration practitioners, and this year we were able to sell seeds, plugs and containerized native plant starts. 

Organizing plants for distribution to buyers throughout the Rogue Basin.
  • Our annual native plant sale happened in spring, with online ordering and drive-through pickup in Ashland and Cave Junction. With 33 different species available from a variety of local growers, it was quite the coordination effort, but in the end the right plants ended up in the right hands! We had assistance with the sale from Vesper Meadow Education Program and Illinois Valley Soil and Water Conservation District, so a huge thanks to them for helping make it a success.
  • After several years of wild collecting seeds, we were finally able to offer a sufficient quantity and diversity of native seeds to hold a sale! It was held in fall in the same format as the plant sale. In order to ensure that these precious seeds would be put to good use, we asked for a restoration plan from all our buyers. Many pounds of seeds were distributed through the sale to a variety of buyers, from government agencies to individual landowners. The Freshwater Trust and others were able to immediately plant seeds in burned zones this fall, one silver lining of the devastating fires. Overall, we judged our first seed sale a success, and its proceeds will be used to coordinate future seed collection events and to pay for the required seed cleaning and testing.
Bags of hand-harvested native seed are labeled, inventoried and stored in dedicated freezers at the Selberg Institute facility.

Coordinating Seed Production

Our achievements this year also comprise a handful of small “wins” that will streamline the process of collecting, cleaning and redistributing native seeds for years to come. 

Gary Kliewer of Long Shadow Fields shows off the Agoseris grandiflora (a type of native dandelion) seed he produced at his farm.
  • Completion of our comprehensive regional Species Priority list, which will guide the work to be done in seed collection and plug production going forward.
  • Moving all our seed cleaning and storage equipment to the space at the Selberg Institute, south of Ashland. It has worked wonders to have a dedicated, secure space to use year-round to organize, store and clean seeds.
  • Training partners on the use of the seed cleaning equipment, including local seed growers and members of the Yurok tribe.
  • Documenting our seed cleaning methods so that others can learn from our hard-won lessons! (Did you know that elderberries should be fermented to separate the seeds from the berries?)
  • Expanding our online resource library and blog to make access to the latest research and literature on ecological restoration accessible to all. 
  • Assisting Oregon Department of Transportation with organizing their seed inventory, so that the right seeds can be used in the right locations (and excess seeds can be directed to post-fire restoration).
  • Completion of our Five Year Strategic Plan, providing direction and goals for 2021-26. We’ll recap this plan in an upcoming blog post. 
Members of the Yurok tribe learning to use the Clipper to clean native seeds that they collected.

Facilitating Conversations about Native Plant Restoration

This year, we held two general Partnership meetings, and both were conducted remotely, with 25-30 people attending each meeting. 

  • In March, we heard from Joshua Chenowith, whose role with the Yurok tribe puts him in the position of procuring native plant materials for use in restoration of the Klamath dam site.
  • At our December meeting, our guest speaker was Chris Adlam, Regional Fire Specialist at OSU Extension. His talk about the role of native plants in fire behavior sparked some great discussion. Read our recap here. 
  • Notes from both of the 2020 General Meetings can be found here.

In addition to the General Meetings, we also held various subcommittee meetings to work on a riparian seed mix for post-fire restoration, plan for the future of RNPP, and continue to refine our priorities. 

Showy milkweed (Asclepia speciosa) and its sticky, fluffy, slowly-exploding pods.

We look forward to another year of working together to bring more native plants to our wonderful Rogue Basin. Stay in touch and all the best in 2021!

December Plant of the Month: Common Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

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Common Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is a common perennial herb known for its fragrant leaves and healing properties. This widespread plant is found throughout the Pacific Northwest and the Northern Hemisphere. Yarrow thrives at a variety of elevations, in both wet and dry climates. In Southern Oregon, you might see yarrow in open grasslands, forests, or maybe even in the corner of your lawn. 

You might be familiar with yarrow’s summer appearance: a wide cluster of flowers rising from a base of green, feather-like leaves. In winter, yarrow looks quite different. The stalk and flowers dry out, turning a dark brown color. Small pockets of seeds are left where the flowers used to be. Often you’ll still see the green, feathery leaves along the base of the plant, ready to grow again come spring. 

Yarrow has been used medicinally for millenia. Leaves were commonly crushed and used as an astringent for wounds (to stop bleeding). Dried yarrow was made into a tea and used to cure digestive, respiratory ailments. The plant is also well loved by pollinating insects and a variety of wildlife!

Native Plants Under Fire: RNPP December 2020 General Meeting Recap, Part 1

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Blame it on 2020 – our attempt to record the General Meeting on December 8th was not successful. Fortunately, we were able to take good written notes, so in this blog post we’ll summarize the fascinating and important presentation by Chris Adlam on what happened in the Almeda fire, and his ideas for improving community fire resilience using native plants. We also have thrown in a few slides from the presentation, and a link to all the slides at the end of the post.

Keep an eye out for the next RNPP blog post, where we will catch you up with the Rogue Native Plant Partnership updates, and our achievements in 2020.

Urban Fire in the Rogue Valley: Are Native Plants the Solution? 

Christopher Adlam may be new to the Rogue Valley, but having lived and studied in northern California, he may understand our fire future better than most! Chris recently joined the OSU Extension team as Southwest Oregon’s Regional Fire Specialist, and he holds his PhD in Ecology from UC Davis. He has studied the effects of fire on plant and animal diversity, as well as community fire resilience. So who better to bring in for Rogue Native Plant Partnership’s guest speaker for our late-fall General Meeting? 

As he launched his slideshow, Chris wisely noted that this is a difficult subject for many, and we echo the sentiment that it’s not easy to talk about the science behind something that affected this community in such deep and diverse ways. However, we feel it is necessary to take a step back, and use our best methods of analysis to look at what happened. Like detectives, we can trace the path of the fire and see what it tells us about how to protect our communities the next time around. Though many homes and businesses were lost, the Almeda Fire could have been much, much worse. There are no simple explanations as to why the fire spread or failed to spread to certain areas of the valley, but we do know that vegetation – both native and invasive plants – played a role in both. 

The Almeda fire started in Ashland on September 8th, 2020, and driven by strong winds, swept into the Bear Creek Greenway, where it burned through riparian zones, grassland, oak savannah and pear orchards before moving on to become an urban fire around Talent. When the fire left the greenway, and we saw houses burning other houses in a chain reaction.

Did the Greenway’s plants and trees, dry after a long, hot summer, cause homes to burn? Chris asks us to back up a minute before answering this question. When people think about the relationship between vegetation and structures, they either fall into the “liability model” camp or the “green solutions” camp. The “liability model” says that the real risk of wildfire is in wildlands, and that plants are setting homes on fire, making plants a liability. Under this model, people move into the wildland urban interface and cut down all the trees around their home in the name of fire safety. 

The “green solutions” perspective, on the other hand, embraces the ability of healthy natural areas and vegetation to actually moderate the risk of fire. For example, plants can moderate fires by slowing their spread, slowing down wind speeds, and catching embers that would otherwise end up on someone’s roof. 

Structures catch fire in three ways: Radiant heat, direct flame contact and embers. In the case of the Almeda fire, few structures had enough vegetation nearby to generate the amount of radiant heat or direct flame contact necessary to ignite a home. So, we can rule out the first two causes of structure fires in this event, which leaves embers as the sole remaining culprit. In fact, embers are the cause of most home fires that spread from wildlands; they can travel for miles to land on homes, work their way through roofing or siding material, and burn the home from the inside out. After that, radiant heat coming from other homes was the main method of fire spread in the urban Almeda fire. 

Were embers generated by vegetation in the Greenway? Absolutely, and we are looking at one plant in particular that burns explosively, sending tall flames and embers into the air: Blackberry. 

Image of blackberry plant on fire.

Restored Areas Burn Slower

Almost immediately after the Almeda fire swept through our region, we heard from restoration practitioners about the profound differences in the impacts of fire on restored vs. non-restored areas. In areas that were restored with native plants, with no blackberry surrounding and climbing up the trunks of trees, the fire burned as fire naturally would in a riparian zone: low and slow. It top-burned understory grasses and native shrubs, without frying the soil, and without climbing into the canopy of large established trees. As a result, these trees survived the fire, and understory shrubs are already resprouting with new growth. 

Example of how the Almeda fire affected restored areas along Wagner Creek in Talent (low, slow, understory burn).

In areas that weren’t restored (most of the 300+ acres of the Bear Creek Greenway), where thickets of blackberry formed a thick blanket over the riparian zone, we saw high intensity fire that destroyed all understory vegetation (except for the hardy blackberry roots) and most of the large trees as well.

Yes, Chris agreed, removing blackberry and replacing it with native shrubs will definitely reduce fire risk. But there’s more that native vegetation can do to improve fire resiliency in our community, and it doesn’t need to be limited to the riparian zone.

Trees to the rescue?

Next, the discussion turned to potential strategies for putting native plants to work to improve our community’s fire resilience. Many native plants in our ecoregion are fire-adapted, meaning that they can resprout quickly after a burn, and thrive from the nutrients created by burned dead material. Some plants even need fire to reproduce, while others grow more fire resistant with age. For example, Ponderosa pine trees, though highly flammable when young, are fire-resistant when mature, with thick bark that deflects heat and embers. 

One aspect of the behavior of the Almeda fire that we found interesting was the effect of “shelterbelts” of trees that were able to shield homes from fire. Deciduous trees like cottonwoods, or even mature conifers, when planted together, formed a “curtain” of vegetation that may have caught embers and let them fall to the ground, where they can extinguish themselves. This effect has been documented in Australia, where shelterbelts are commonly planted as windbreaks. Looking at images of these landscapes after a fire, homes behind shelterbelts were spared. Chris emphasized that this effect has only been observed anecdotally, but it deserves further study. 

Expanding on the shelterbelt concept to shield homes, to shield entire communities from strong winds like we saw the day of the Almeda fire, is another possibility. Traditionally, the hillsides surrounding Ashland up to Medford have been populated by oaks and madrones; could these trees function as valley-wide shelterbelts to slow down windspeeds and capture embers traveling from afar?

Who’s burning who?

After the slideshow, Chris fielded many questions from the audience, but we’d like to circle back to a question about the fears some members of the community have about vegetation in the wake of the fire. Falling back into the “liability model” of structure-vegetation interactions, some (not in this audience, but members of the community at large) are suggesting or considering clearing all trees and shrubs from properties to improve fire resistance. 

Says Chris, “Your neighbor’s house has a higher likelihood of burning down your house than your vegetation does.” Yes, he says, if leaves and needles from nearby trees are covering the roof and filling the gutters, that would be a factor in setting a house on fire. But generally, the advice is to keep all vegetation cut back 5’ from homes, and to thin vegetation within 100’ of the home. (Read more about thinning recommendations from the NFPA.) This should be enough to prevent flames from a vegetative fire from spreading to a home. In fact, it’s possible to see situations where the house initially caught fire from an ember, and downwind trees were burned or scorched, but upwind trees suffered no damage. In other words, it’s not the trees lighting the houses on fire, but the other way around. The solution is to construct more fire resilient homes, which is already possible and not more expensive that traditional construction methods.

Revisioning the Greenway

Some audience questions focused on the actions we can take next to improve fire resilience in our community while promoting the use of native plants in restoration efforts. 

To that end, Rogue Native Plant Partnership has formed a working group to develop a native seed mix appropriate for reseeding riparian zones. Although the initial seeding of the Bear Creek Greenway has already taken place, it could be possible to include native grasses and wildflowers in future re-seedings. These species will provide benefits to wildlife while staying green later into the summer, reducing the flammability of these areas. 

Meanwhile, we support all efforts to suppress blackberry re-growth until native plants can be established. Agencies and local governments are seeking funding for restoration work, and there’s some talk of a community visioning process to begin next year, to receive public input into how to manage the Greenway going forward. Participation of native plant enthusiasts and restoration practitioners will be vital, to identify and question “liability model” thinking. We don’t need to, nor should we eliminate all vegetation in fire-prone areas, but focus on evidenced-based solutions that work.

Access the RNPP Resource Library for:

How To Find Your Soil Type

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An important component of any habitat restoration plan is the soil type. Knowing what types of soil are present on the property will help you decide which plants will do best in each location. When it comes to healthy plants, having the right soil conditions is about as important as siting the plant correctly for optimal sunlight (shade or full sun?) and water (dry or moist?).

Fortunately, the USDA’s Web Soil Survey exists to impart data already collected by the USDA to members of the public. It’s as easy as going to the website and entering your address (plus a couple extra steps). Let’s walk through it together:

How to Get Your USDA Soil Report

  1. Navigate to https://websoilsurvey.sc.egov.usda.gov/App/HomePage.htm
  2. In the drop-down Address field on the left, enter your address.
  3. Use the AOI button in the “Area of Interest (AOI)” tab to select the area for which you would like the soil information.
The Area of Interest is selected
  1. Once you’ve selected your Area of Interest, click the yellow Soil Map tab. Click “Printable version” in the upper-right corner to save or print this map.
Soil map of the Area of Interest
  1. Now, click the “Soil data Explorer” tab, then click the “Soil Reports” tab in the ribbon below. On the left-hand menu, click the drop-down arrows for “AOI Inventory”, then “Component Text Descriptions”. Then click “View Soil Report”. A description of each of your soil components will appear below the map.

November Native Plant of the Month: Licorice Fern

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RNPP has a Native Plant of the Month column in the Rogue Basin Partnership newsletter! You can find the full RBP November newsletter here, and our Native Plant of the Month Column copied below.

As the reds and yellows of fall begin to fade, my eyes are drawn from the canopy to the forest floor, where spots of green create a vibrant contrast with the fallen leaves. Licorice fern (Polypodium glycyrrhiza) is a common fern found in mixed conifer and deciduous woodlands, thriving in moist, shaded to partly-shaded environments. It is native from Southern Alaska to California, with isolated populations existing in Idaho and Arizona.

Licorice fern often grows on the mossy trunks and branches of deciduous trees, but can also be found on mossy rocks, logs, or the forest floor. Fronds have simple pinnae with pointed tips, and often swoop downward from their perch on tree trunks and branches. Licorice fern is named for its rhizomes, which taste of licorice. These rhizomes were used medicinally by Native Americans as a remedy for coughs, colds, and sore throats.

Seeding Your Site: Methods, Rates and More!

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So far in our Restoration Best Practices blog post series, we’ve covered Developing an Ecological Restoration Plan and Site Preparation, which is particularly important if you’re planning to use native seeds to restore your site. Whether it’s a prairie, wetland, forest or another type of ecosystem, the survival and success of your native seeds is entirely dependent on having low competition from non-native plants and nice, loose soil in which to put down roots. We encourage you to go back and read those two posts if you haven’t yet. (Remember, a Restoration Plan is required if you are buying seeds from RNPP this fall!)

In this blog post, we’ll discuss some of the reasons for using native seeds vs starts and how to choose seeds for your site. Then we’ll move into some of the technical details of creating a seed mix and introduce our calculator tool for figuring out how much seed to buy. 

Why Seeds?

Growing plants from seed is more work than buying plants already established in containers. So why do it? Here are a few reasons:

  • Diversity. Here in the Rogue Valley, growing from seed gives you a much wider array of species to choose from. Not all plants are going to be available in containers.
  • Success. Some plants don’t survive transplanting very well, and plants actually have the remarkable ability to adapt to a site as they grow. So, the moment a plant puts down roots in your soil, it is learning about the local conditions and setting itself up for faster, stronger, healthier growth.
  • $avings. It’s much cheaper to grow a thousand plants yourself from seed, than buy all those plants in containers!
  • Fun. You’ll learn much more about the native plant life cycle by watching them grow from seed. There’s nothing like seeding a site in fall, then coming back in the spring and seeing the brown earth covered in green!

Selecting Your Seeds

In restoration work, it can often be difficult to decide what kind of plant community to establish, especially in sites long dominated by non-native species. It’s important not only to look toward the past, understanding what plants might have grown in your site (perhaps prior to the disturbance that caused non-natives to move in), but also toward the future. How might conditions change, and what plants are best suited to adapt to those changes – be it drought, flood or fire? 

Seeds should be selected based on your restoration goals. Are you creating a pollinator meadow or trying to stabilize a streambank? Hopefully, you’ve already laid out these goals in your Restoration Plan. Your seed mix, plus any remaining weed or native seeds that survived the site preparation process, will be what determines the type of plant community that comes up in the spring (or fall if your seeding happens in the spring – see our Site Prep article for a discussion on the best time to plant your seeds). 

Before you purchase seed, be sure to do some research on the plant and the conditions in which it likes to grow. This way, you can avoid planting seeds that will not be successful in your site.

Seeding Methods

Sean & Lilia hand seeding and raking a restoration site after thinning and controlled burning

There are two common ways of actually getting the seed on the ground: broadcasting by hand and drill seeding using a tractor.

  • Broadcasting. Best for smaller sites (half an acre or less). To broadcast seed, simply walk in a regular pattern across your site, throwing by hand and attempting to distribute it as evenly as possible. Or, use a “belly-crank” seeder. In either case, broadcasted seed should be distributed at a higher seeding rate than if using a drill seeder. Because broadcasting doesn’t actually bury the seed in the soil, these seeds have a slightly lower rate of success, and may be eaten by birds and field mice! On smaller scales, this effect can be mitigated by raking, or rolling over the seed to press it in. 
  • Drill seeding. A drill seeder pulled behind a tractor is a fantastic way to distribute seeds evenly and get them in the soil without turning it over (bringing buried weed seeds to the surface where they can germinate). A seed drill doesn’t do any actual drilling; it can be more accurately described as placing the seeds underground, at a rate and a depth specified by the user. 

Belly crank seeders and rollers can usually be rented out by the day from a local farm supply store, home improvement store or equipment rental business. Jackson Soil and Water Conservation District has a drill seeder for rent.

Tractor pulled seed drill

Seeding Rate Calculations

By choosing a specific seeding rate and sticking with it, we can introduce scientific accuracy to the art of restoration. We start with a target seeding rate and work from there. 

What is seeding rate? Simply put, it’s the number of seeds you need to apply to a given area to achieve the desired plant coverage. Most restoration projects use a seeding rate of between 30-60 seeds/square foot. Knowing your seeding rate will help you determine the number of pounds or ounces of seeds to purchase.

What’s the ideal seeding rate for your site? It depends on your goals, seeding method and site conditions:

  • At the lower end of the range (30 seeds/sq. ft.), you’ll be seeding a site that has been well prepared (no weed seeds; flat, smooth soil surface), and has excellent soil. You have a seed drill or some other way of accurately distributing the seed, and you want plant coverage to be somewhat sparse (perhaps for bee nesting habitat). 
  • At the higher end of the range (60 seeds/sq. ft.), you are trying to seed heavily to outcompete weeds that survived your site prep, there’s a slope or other factors that could cause seeds to wash or blow away, and your goal is to have dense plant coverage at the site.

Now let’s talk about your seed mix. You don’t want a monoculture of one seed in your restoration site, but a mix of different species — it goes back to that plant community idea we were discussing earlier. Before you can figure out how much of each seed to buy, you’ll need to decide on what percentage of the total mix that each type of seed will occupy. For example, if your goal is to restore a native grassland meadow, you might shoot for 50% Danthonia californica (California oatgrass). 

Finally, the seeding rate is dependent on the number of seeds per pound, which is different for each species. If you plan to purchase seeds from the RNPP Seed Sale, you can find the number of seeds per pound on the species description page or here in this handy table. 

How to Use the Calculator

We created this spreadsheet as a quick method of calculating the quantity of seed you need to buy. You’ll need to first input the following data:

  1. Your target seeding rate (# of seeds/square foot)
  2. The number of acres to be seeded
  3. The names and number of seeds per pound of each species you want to include in your seed mix (seeds/lb can be found HERE or on the species description page in the RNPP seed sale).
  4. The percentage of the seed mix that species will occupy 
  5. The cost per pound for each species

Here is what the calculator will give you after you enter the data above:

  1. How many pounds of seed you’ll need for each of the species in your mix
  2. The individual seeding rate for each species in your mix.
  3. The cost per species 
  4. The total cost of your seed mix

Ready to get started? Download the spreadsheet by clicking here and give it a go!

—

Tuula Rebhahn has spent the summer as Ecological Science Intern with The Understory Initiative. When she’s not out in the field counting plants, she’s a freelance writer and editor. Connect with her on Facebook or LinkedIn!

Restoration Best Practices: Developing an Ecological Restoration Plan

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Are you planning on engaging in ecological restoration on your land? If so, an important first step is to develop a plan. It doesn’t have to be complex, but it is important to outline your plans, methods, and timeline so that you can keep on track and do the best you can for the area to be restored. Another reason to have an ecological restoration plan in place is to be able to share information with any agencies that you might be looking for support from. Additionally, the Rogue Native Plant Partnership’s annual native seed sale (next occurring in Fall 2020) requires seed buyers to have a basic restoration plan in place so that we know the hard-to-come-by seed is going to be used productively. 

Below we have laid out the information that is useful to have in your restoration plan. We encourage you to use this opportunity to learn as much about your land as you can – about the soil, plants, historical impacts, wildlife habitat potential, and anything else you can dive into – it’s a great way to get more connected to your land and be able to do your best in enhancing plant and wildlife biodiversity. You can also download an example restoration plan here (Word document).

Introduction to the land:

  • Location of land – the address, and the location on the landscape (hill slope, valley floor, wetland, etc)
  • Size of restoration site
  • Soil type (read our guide: How to Find Your Soil Type)
  • Ecoregion (find here: https://www.roguenativeplants.org/interactive-oregon-ecoregions-map/)
  • Habitats present (eg. riparian, woodlands, grasslands) and other main features (house site, road, pasture)
  • Map showing land (eg. screenshot from Google Maps, MyMaps, hand drawn map)
  • Relevant land use history
  • Brief description of specific area to be restored

Details of area/s of land to be restored (if more than one area, write up each set of details separately):

  • Location of area to be restored within land parcel (add a map if possible)
  • Current condition of area to be restored
  • List weed and native plant species – you can use apps like Google Lens and iNaturalist to help with identification.
  • List current and potential impacts on area to be restored (eg. weed drift from neighbors, too much sunlight on riparian zone) 
  • Describe restoration goals (eg. I want to remove the weeds from the creek banks and replant with natives to create shade for the water, or, I want to remove invasive grasses from my woodlands and increase the number of native grass and herb species that will benefit native pollinators)
  • Describe methods to be used in restoring area & timeline for each part of the process. Click on the links below for more information on each process. 
  • Timeline for every restoration phase

Any special considerations that need to be accounted for, eg.:

  • Oregon Dept. Fish & Wildlife plans required for certain riparian zones
  • Historical sites that may require protection

Additions:

  • Include list of observed native and weed plant species
  • Include list of observed wildlife on land
  • Include any relevant photos – eg. photos of area to be restored. Make sure to take after photos! 

Useful Documents: the Rogue Native Plant Partnership Resources Library is a fantastic place to learn more about a range of topics related to ecological restoration, from weed removal to harvesting native seed to growing native plants in containers, and much more. Here are a few documents we thought might be particularly useful for when you are writing an ecological restoration plan:

Native Plant Grower Profile: Holly Mills

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Holly Mills is one of the local wholesale growers providing plants for RNPP’s native plant sale this spring. Her background is in organic vegetable gardening but she made the transition to native plant production for restoration projects a few years back under the guidance of James Kraemer of Silver Springs Nursery.

Below is a video interview we did with her about why she enjoys working with native plants and some of her tips on how to select the right species for your property.

 

Contact Holly

Native Plant Grower Profile: Taylor Starr from White Oak Farm & Education Center

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We recently caught up with Taylor Starr, co-founder and Executive Director of White Oak Farm & Education Center in Williams, OR. Taylor is one of the growers of the native plants we are currently selling through our RNPP Spring Plant Sale (ending April 16). Before moving to Oregon, Taylor worked as a farmer, landscaper, and teacher in Northern California and Washington State.  He has taught children organic gardening, natural history, and life sciences, and taught ecosystemology at UC Berkeley.  He graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Holistic Ecology in 2000.  Taylor grew up near the shores of Puget Sound, where he developed a love of the natural world through annual family backpacking trips in the Cascades and Olympics.  He currently directs things at White Oak, farms a wide range of fruits and veggies, teaches permaculture and sustainable living skills to kids and adults, and plays as much soccer as he can with his eight-year-old daughter.

Can you tell us a bit about your native plant growing business and how you started out in this line of work? 

Taylor: We run White Oak Farm & Education Center in Williams on 62 acres, where we have been for 18 years. We have been organic farming and running an environmental education center, mostly for kids but also for adults, focused on sustainable living skills, growing food and ecology. We’ve always had our own nursery for growing plants for our farm – for propagating fruit trees, berries, and hedgerow plants. But about six or seven years ago we started getting inquiries from people in the community about buying plants from us, so we started to ramp up production for local folks and that was pretty popular and successful, and got us excited about growing more plants. About two and a half years ago we started thinking about how we could make it a bigger part of the financial picture for supporting our organization and the farm, and what that might look like. I started researching around the valley and talking to different folks in the nursery trade, and especially focusing on small nurseries and what the niche was, what markets were underserved and what kind of opportunities existed. 

I met James Kramer from Silver Springs Nursery and he really got me excited about focusing on native plants, and specifically focusing on native plants for restoration, which fitted in really well with what we were doing on the land. We were growing native plants for our own restoration projects here on the property for erosion control. Mostly uplands plantings, but some riparian projects as well. So I had a little bit of experience with natives, and a lot of enthusiasm. I’m an avid outdoor person and backpacker, so I was really excited about partnering with James, and that’s what we’ve been doing for the last couple of years. We are mostly doing wholesale, but also growing for local nurseries and for the local community. We are really pretty new in the world of native plant commercial production, and it’s a really steep learning curve, we’re learning lots, and are excited to just dig in deeper. We’ve been expanding a good bit each year. This year I’ve got about 1600 sq feet of greenhouse space, and that much again of shaded growing space, and trying to grow a wide diversity of native plants and see what does best for us, and what the most demand is for, and go from there. 

Speaking of big learning curves, what are some of the biggest challenges you face with growing and selling native plants? 

Taylor: The biggest challenges we face in growing native plants is the transition from organic farming – where I have two decades of experience and everything is old hat and basic and simple – to the natives where every species has very specific requirements for germination, and very specific protocols as far as stratification and seed collecting protocols. You can’t just order locally adapted native plant seed from the catalog the way you can with vegetable seed. Every step of the process is much more complex and much more self-reliant. If I want seed for something I pretty much need to go out and find it myself in the wild, or partner with James or Holly Mills, another growing partner we have on these projects. 

Everything from seed collection all the way through to germination and growing the plants out is very specific for each species. I like that part of it because it’s a challenge, and it’s fun to have the challenge and feel like the success are bigger successes, but there’s definitely a lack of information about some of the protocols for these species, as well as the challenge of finding the seed and making sure the seed is viable and getting good germination.

On the selling side, I know the Rogue Native Plant Partnership is working on this issue, but being someone new in the world of commercial native plant marketing, it feels like there’s a little bit of a disconnect between the restoration project managers and the native plant growers. It’s going to be at least 12 months from seed collection to having the finished plant, so ideally 12 months ahead of time I would know, ok, there’s this much demand for this species, and this much demand for this other species, and I’m finding it’s a little hard to get that timing and demand information from the local players who implement the restoration projects. So that’s the biggest challenge, just knowing what the market is, and what plants are good to grow because there’s going to be a market for them down the road. There’s a little bit of security in knowing you can just keep watering them and hopefully there’s a demand for them the following year. It’s not like lettuce, where if you don’t sell it that week, it’s gone. 

On the flip side, what do you see as some of the biggest benefits to growing native plants as a commercial grower?

Taylor: The fact that within the restoration movement, and even the home gardeners and landscapers, it feels like there’s growing awareness and enthusiasm about the importance of planting drought-tolerant plants, planting to provide habitat for pollinators and other native species. It seems like there’s growing awareness about the importance of that, so it feels like a good time to be growing native plants. There’s only going to be more awareness and more enthusiasm for doing more restoration work. Obviously there’s plenty of landscapes that need restoration, so there’s no lack of demand from a purely restoration standpoint. From an economic standpoint there’s more awareness of how if we don’t take long term care of our riparian areas especially, the economic costs are going to be far greater than the cost of doing this work. I feel like it’s only going to grow over time as people become more educated.

For me – coming from a world of more annuals and food-based crops – I have more flexibility if things don’t sell at a certain time because native plants are still going to maintain their value as long as I can keep them watered and healthy in the pots. It feels like there’s a little more security as far as the value being maintained in the plants over time. 

Also I really like it because, labor-wise, there’s a lot of seeding work and seed collecting work in the fall, and through the winter there’s work with cuttings, and in the early spring there’s more seeding and greenhouse work. So it balances out really well with the annual vegetable and perennial fruit-producing season, which is busier in the spring and summer and the early fall. It works really well for me in terms of keeping folks on the farm employed throughout the season and having some income-producing projects happening on the farm during the winter months. It pairs really nicely for us with the farming. 

I know we’re not meant to have favorites, but do you have any native plants that you particularly love growing?

Taylor: I didn’t know we weren’t supposed to have favorites! It’s funny because I was thinking about that, and it really depends on the day, you know? I get a lot of satisfaction from growing big trees. We named our farm White Oak Farm because we have a couple of grandmother oaks on the property that are just super inspiring because I know they have been there for hundreds of years. The oak tree is such a keystone species in Southern Oregon, for food production for animals and habitat, and a food source for humans over the centuries. So I love planting oaks and acorns. Last year we did a big acorn collection project with some school kids who came out to the farm and collected thousands of acorns from two of our biggest acorn producing oaks. Unfortunately, we were going to plant them with the kids this spring during spring school visits, but of course like everyone else right now, our lives are a little bit topsy turvy so there’s no kids here to plant the acorns with us. So we’re planting them ourselves. 

I love to grow oaks and all the other big trees – our maple seedlings are two inches tall right now in their little pots and that’s super satisfying. I’ve also been really enjoying some of the shrubby species, the dogwoods and willows this winter have been great to work with. I love elderberry, so experimenting with seedlings and cuttings with elderberries is really satisfying. So a wide range are favorites depending on the day and what I’m working on.

Gardeners sometimes look to native plants as more likely to be deer-proof, but I’ve certainly discovered that’s not always the case. Have you discovered any native plants that you think are truly, really, actually, 100% deer-proof?

Taylor: One of my first jobs, when I was in high school in the summer time, was working for a local nursery and landscaper up in Washington, and one of the first things he said was, “Never tell a customer that something is 100% deer-proof because I can guarantee the deer will eat that plant the first week it goes in the ground.” I think deer have been eating native plants for as long as there’s been deer, so I don’t know that there’s anything specific to native plants that makes them less likely to be popular with the deer. I’ve seen deer eat almost anything, I think it just depends on the time of year. 

In the summer, when it’s so dry up in the hills and the deer come down to the irrigated yards and the edges of the irrigated zones, they are just so hungry for anything that’s got moisture in it. I would say that the less irrigated the area, I’ve noticed the deer are less likely to browse. They really smell the water, so the faster growing, the more well-watered and fertilized the plant, the more likely they are to eat it, as far as I’ve been able to notice. 

When talking to gardeners and land stewards, what do you most often find yourself saying to encourage them to purchase and grow native plants?

Taylor: I’m a terrible marketer so I don’t know if I necessarily say anything to anybody to try and encourage them to do anything! People are just going to do what they are going to do. I take the approach that, hey, I’m here growing these things, if you want them that’s great. I’d love to sell them to you. There’s so many benefits that are so obvious, from drought-tolerant to habitat creation. I feel like the pollinator angle has gained a lot more awareness over the last few years, and it’s been cool to see customers ask about that and think about that more. But I’m a big fan of hedgerows in general, and trying to encourage people to plant hedgerows for privacy, for shade, for habitat, for the pollinators, for hopefully some products that people can harvest as well. Maybe berries for medicine, maybe basketry materials, or browse for animals. There’s just so many benefits to planting natives, and I feel like the people I usually find myself talking to about this stuff already know it’s a good idea, and it’s more about helping them to get what’s the right thing for their site. I think that there’s definitely growing enthusiasm for planting natives and I think that’s really exciting. 

Do you have any tips for people that want to propagate native plants for their own use? Or as a business?

Taylor: I would probably say the same advice for both situations, which is just to start experimenting. That’s how we started doing the nursery on a commercial basis. It was just years of experimenting and growing plants for ourselves to plant out on the farm and seeing what we enjoyed growing without having to invest a lot of money or a lot of time into infrastructure. Playing around with different species and experimenting, and then seeing if it’s something you like to do and something you can see having economic potential. I think just starting out by diving in and doing things on a small scale, and not being afraid to fail. 

Going out and seeing what kind of seeds you can collect in your neighborhood or on your own land, and playing around with it, seems like the best way to approach it from the small scale home nursery perspective. But even if you’re thinking about doing something commercial, I think messing around with it on a small scale makes a lot of sense before diving in and spending a bunch of money on infrastructure. Because it does take having the greenhouse space and having the controlled environment to work with, and having the irrigation, and having the pots or the soil. For us, because we were coming from farming, we already had a lot of those things in place and we were able to repurpose this corner of the greenhouse or repurpose pots, and slowly build up the infrastructure to run the nursery as its own little business. At least for me, that was a good way to do it because it lessened the risk of tackling something that could prove to not be successful, and made it easier to slowly get going. I would just experiment, I think that’s the best way to get into nearly any new activity. 

Learn more about White Oak Farm & Education Center on their website and Facebook page

Rogue Basin Ecological Restoration Projects Review

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A number of RNPP Partners are working on important ecological restoration projects in the Rogue Basin, and have shared information with us about their process and progress, including the species of native seeds used, and methods they have used for site preparation and ongoing care and monitoring. This information is shared with the intention of providing useful information to those wanting to start their own ecological restoration project in the Rogue Basin.

This table will be updated with more information as these ecological restoration projects progress, and with new restoration projects that RNPP partners undertake. 

Location & Habitats Present

Key Restoration Purposes

Plant Species Used (seed)

Site Preparation Methods

Seeding Method

Monitoring Methods

Notes

Location: Ashland, private property, valley floor

Habitat: Pasture & riparian


3.3 acres

Hazard fuels reduction, wildlife habitat enhancement, invasives mitigation, riparian restoration, restoring burn area

*Achyrachaena mollis
*Clarkia purpurea ssp. viminea
*Poa secunda
*Pseudoroegneria spicata

Removal of flammable brush along driveway and near structures, and removal of invasive species in pasture and riparian zones using tools and physical labor.

Hand seeding

Regular visual surveys

Achyrachaena mollis: Mid-november 2018 broadcast, have not seen any survival. Pseudoroegneria spicata: Mid-november 2018 broadcast in field, some germination and survival. Poa secunda: Broadcast fall last 2018, germinated fairly well, appreciated water during the 2019 summer. Clarkia purpurea ssp. viminea: Mid-november broadcast, good germination, not certain if it persisted to going to seed.

Location: Sams Valley (Gold Hill), private property, oak woodland & mixed conifer forest.

Habitat:  Riparian, mixed conifer forest & oak woodland

20 acres

Small diameter tree removal, invasives mitigation, hazard fuels reduction, wildlife habitat enhancement

*Achillea millefolium
*Achnatherum lemmonii
*Achyrachaena mollis
*Agoseris grandiflora
*Bromus laevipes
*Castilleja tenuis
*Clarkia purpurea ssp. purpurea
*Collinsia grandiflora
*Eriophyllum lanatum
*Escholzia caespitosa
*Festuca californica
*Festuca roemeri
*Grindelia nana
*Lasthenia california *Madia elegans ssp. densifolia
*Penstemon anguineus
*Pseudoroegneria spicata
*Rupertia physodes
*Wyethia angustifolia

Removal of invasives by hand pulling and weed wrench, removing small diameter trees, limbing up remaining trees, chipping woody residue to remain in forest, planting native vegetation cover (seeds and shrubs).

Hand seeding. Fescues with rake and foot trod in some areas. Hand-mixes of seeds boot-stomped in before hand-made cages put around woody native shrubs. Some broadcasting,

Seeding in winters 2018-19 and 2019-20. Several species will be seeded in winter 2020-21.

Regular visual surveys, at least weekly during new native shrub watering season, May- October 2019. Photographing wildflowers blooming when spotted.

Most of 5 bunchgrass species held back and seeded in winter 2019-2020.

Flower species and grasses all compete with Scotch broom seedbank that continues, as well as Himalayan blackberry.

Location: Little Butte Creek, Eagle Point. City of Eagle Point, Medford Water Comission & Bureau of Land Management partnership 

Habitat:  Riparian

2 acres

Flood plain restoration, wildlife habitat enhancement, invasives mitigation, riparian restoration, improved water quality, improved native plant biodiversity

*Achnatherum lemmonii
*Achillea millefolium
*Asclepias fascicularis
*Clarkia purpurea ssp. viminea
*Eriophyllum lanatum
*Festuca californica
*Festuca roemeri

Recontouring of bank slopes, log jams buried in banks, blackberry and reed canary grass removal, regrading of previously blocked creek channel, and planting and seeding of native plants.

Location: Rogue River property of Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife 

Habitat: Riparian

Restoring burned area

*Elymus glaucus
*Pseudoroegneria spicata

Leaves removed to expose bare earth before seeding

Seed broadcast and raked into earth. Hay applied to cover seeded bare earth.

Plot development and monitoring

A 50 x 100 foot plot was established on 11-9-2018. Leaves were removed to expose the bare soil and the seeds were raked into the ground. The plot was treated with 6 lbs per acre (.70 lbs) of Elymus glaucus. On 1/3 of the short side of each plot (16.5 x 100 feet), an additional 6 lbs per acre (.23 lbs) was applied. On ½ of the long side of the plot (50 x 50 feet), hay was applied to cover the bare ground. Didn’t get final pictures but it sounds like the seed didn’t take very well. A 10 ft x 10 ft test plot of Pseudoroegneria spicata was created nearby on 11-9-2018. Leaves were raked to remove the bare soil, seeds applied, raked in, and the soil was left bare. No luck here either.

Private Property assisted by ODFW

Restoring burned area

*Elymus glaucus
*Melica hartfordii

Seed to be broadcast Fall 2019

Location: Denman Wildlife Area (ODFW)

Habitat: Riparian & meadow

7 acres

Restoring burned area

*Achillea millifolium
*Bromus californicus
*Elymus glaucus
*Lotus crassicaulis
*Melica hartfordii
*Psoralea simplex

No-till seed drill

Visual surveys

Only 4-5 passes were made on the outer edges of the meadow with the no-till seed drill, because application rate was too high starting off. No seed was applied in the center of the meadow, or in areas with high density of blackberry. Some seed did well (BRCA) but there’s still a lot of non-native competition. Didn’t see any LOCRA.

Location:  Rogue River Preserve (Southern Oregon Land Conservancy).

Habitat: Riparian and oak woodlands / savanna

352 acres

Invasives mitigation and restoring disturbed areas

*Achnatherum lemmonii
*Elymus glaucus
*Festuca californica

Disturb soil before seeding

Spread seed on disturbed soil in winter after weed removal

Visual surveys

The Elymus has not come up at the Japanese knotweed site, but other bunchgrasses are coming up along the roadside.

Location: Sampson Creek Preserve (Selberg Institute).

Habitat: Upland meadows, oak woodlands

4800 acres

Pollinator habitat enhancement, invasives mitigation

Purchased seed: *Achillea millefolium
*Achnatherum lemmonii
*Agoseris grandiflora
*Asclepias fasicularis
*Asclepias speciosa
*Clarkia purpurea
*Danthonia californica
*Elymus glaucus
*Festuca roemeri
*Lomatium californicum
*Lupinus microcarpus
*Madia elegans
Seed Collected on site:
*Achillea millefolium
*Amesikia meniesii
*Asclepias fasicularis
*Brodiea elegans
*Bromus carinatus
*Bromus leavipes
*Calochortus tolmiei
*Cirsium ciliolatum
*Clarkia purpurea
*Clarkia gracilis
*Cynoglossum grande
*Dichelostemma congestum
*Elymus glaucus
*Epilobium brachycarpum
*Ericameria nauseosa
*Eriophyllum lanatum
*Festuca californica
*Festuca roemeri
*Frittilaria affinis
*Lomatium californicum
*Lomatium nudicaule
*Lomatium utriculatum
*Lomatium macrocarpum
*Lomatium Triternatum
*Lupinus microcarpus
*Madia elegans
*Madia gracilis
*Sanicula crassicaulis
*Stipa lemmonii
*Toxicoscordion venenosus
*Triteleia hendersonii
*Wyethia angustifolia

Weed whacking in area where planting happened, prescribed burn in area where seed was broadcast

Broadcast after prescribed burn

Test site within the prescribed burn area is being monitored for seed germination success

Location: Bear Creek near Pine Street in Central Point (Rogue Valley Council of Governments)

Habitat:  Riparian

20 acres

Restoring burned area and improving native plant biodiversity

*Achillea millefolium
*Amsinckia menziesii
*Asclepias fascicularis
*Bromus carinatus
*Bromus laevipes
*Bromus laevipes
*Clarkia purpurea
*Elymus glaucus
*Eriophyllum lanatum
*Festuca roemeri
*Grindelia nana

Spot spraying blackberry with herbicide

Broadcast seeding, using straw / mulch to cover

Monthly observation monitoring to check native plant and invasive growth

Location: Kane Creek / Stage Rd Culvert Replacement (The Freshwater Trust)

Habitat:  Riparian

Restoring disturbed area, improved water quality, improved wildlife habitat, invasives mitigation

*Achillea millefolium
*Eriophyllum lanatum
*Festuca roemeri

Treatment of invasives with herbicide

Broadcast seeding

Photo point, qualitative, and quantitative monitoring will be conducted on the project site.

Location: Hwy 99 Applegate River Bridge (The Freshwater Trust)

Habitat:  Riparian

Restoring disturbed area, improved water quality, improved wildlife habitat, invasives mitigation

*Achillea millefolium
*Eriophyllum lanatum
*Festuca idahoensis ssp. roemeri
*Festuca californica

Treatment of invasives with herbicide

Broadcast seeding

Photo point, qualitative, and quantitative monitoring will be conducted on the project site.

Location: Whetstone Savana Preserve Vernal Pool Ash Swale (The Freshwater Trust)

Habitat: Oak savanna, prairie and vernal pools

Restoring disturbed area, improved water quality, improved wildlife habitat, invasives mitigation

Manual, mechanical and chemical forms of weed suppression (with extra care being used in use of chemicals)

The bare ground between plantings will be seeded with a site-appropriate native species mix.

In person site assessments and qualitative monitoring will be used to adaptively manage the site

Location:  Eagle Point solar farm (Understory Consulting)

Habitat: Pasture / prairie

45 acres

Improved native plant biodiversity, improved wildlife habitat, invasives mitigation

*Achillea millefolium
*Agoseris grandiflora
*Amsinckia menziesii
*Asclepias fascicularis
*Camassia quamash
*Carex densa
*Carex pachystachya
*Carex tumulicola
*Clarkia purpurea
*Collinsia grandiflora
*Cynoglossum grande
*Daucus pusillus
*Eriophyllum lanatum
*Festuca roemeri
*Gillia capitata
*Grindelia nana
*Hemizonia fitchii
*Helianthus bolanderi
*Juncus tenuis
*Lomatium utriculatum
*Lupinus adsurgens
*Lupinus bicolor
*Lupinus microcarpus
*Madia elegans
*Navarretia intertextata
*Plagiobothrys figuratus
*Ranunculus austrooreganus
*Wyethia angustifolia

Herbicide, mowing, box scraping

Drill seeding, broadcast seeding

Quadrats arranged on a grid throughout the property

After one year, invasive grass cover decreased by about 99%. However, that was mostly replaced by invasive annual forbs along with some of the native species that we seeded. Native cover only increased by about 3%. Follow-up treatments will include pre-emergent herbicide to try and limit the germination of annual weeds and kill the seed bank. Additional native seeding, including more grasses will occur after the weed seed bank is acceptable exhausted.

Location:  Medford foothills (Pacific Slope Consulting) 

Habitat: Oak woodlands, oak savanna, mixed woodlands

70 acres

Hazard fuels reduction, wildlife habitat enhancement, small diameter tree removal, improved native plant biodiversity

Small pile burning

Hand seeding

Growing season species tally for 1 - 2 years following seeding

Location: Medford Water Commission Vernal Pools Preserve (Terra Science Inc)

Habitat: Meadow / prairie, vernal pools, wetland

17 acres

Invasives mitigation, improved water quality, improved native plant biodiversity, restoring disturbed area

*Achnatherum lemmonii
*Achyrachaena mollis
*Amsinckia menziesii
*Clarkia purpurea ssp. purpurea
*Danthonia californica
*Poa secunda
*Pseudoroegneria spicata

Prescribed burn (every five years). Shallow discing of uplands prior to broadcast.

Hand seeding

Revisit annual vegetation plots; square meter vegetation analysis during peak bloom periods.

Upland mound data assessment compared pre-burn baseline vegetation communities to post fire and seed introduction. Analysis documents a 91.9% reduction of invasive Taeniatherum caput medusa with a 188.4% increase of native species atop mound landforms.

Location: Rogue Valley Manor, Medford

Habitat: Meadow / prairie

1 acre

Post construction restoration, improve native plant biodiversity

*Achnatherum lemmonii
*Achillea millefolium
*Achyrachaena mollis
*Amsinckia menziesii
*Clarkia purpurea
*Collinsia grandiflora
*Daucus pusillus
*Eriophyllum lanatum
*Festuca roemeri
*Koeleria macrantha
*Lupinus microcarpus

Equipment grading

Broadcast seeding in the Fall

Visual surveys

Location: US Army Corp of Engineers site in Trail, OR

Habitat: Pasture, oak savanna, riparian, mixed woodlands, recent burn, oak woodlands

300 acres

Hazard fules reduction, restoring burned area, invasives mitigation, small diameter tree removal, improved native plant biodiversity

Varies, minimal site prep due to lack of funds / staffing resources

Hand seeding

Visual surveys

Location: Whetstone Savanna Preserve (The Nature Conservancy) 

Habitat: Oak woodlands, oak savanna, meadow / prairie, wetland

220 acres

Restoring burned area, invasives mitigation, improved native plant biodiversity

Prescribed fire and harrowing

Hand seeding

Quadrat monitoring and photo points. At a minimum, assess plant guilds such as native annual forbs, non-native annual grasses.

Location:  Sterling Creek, private property.

Habitat: Mixed woodlands, oak woodlands

11 acres

Small diameter tree removal, restoring disturbed areas, improving native plant biodiversity, invasives mitigation, improving wildlife habitat

*Achyrachaena mollis
*Bromus laevipes
*Festuca californica
*Festuca roemeri
*Festuca subulata
*Koeleria cristata
*Melica harfordii
*Pseudognaphalium canescens
*Stipa lemmonii + a range of native herb seeds collected on site

Small pile burning, mechanical removal of invasives

Raking ground before and after hand seeding, including directly into remains of burn pile sites

Visual surveys and photos

February Native Plant of the Month: Snow Queen

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RNPP has a Native Plant of the Month column in the Rogue Basin Partnership newsletter! You can find the full RBP February newsletter here, and our Native Plant of the Month Column copied below.

Snow Queen (Synthyris reniformis) can be seen blossoming close to the ground in coniferous forests and woodlands from early February, making it one of the earliest native blooms to be seen each year in southern Oregon. But it can be very easily overlooked at only 2-6 inches tall, with flowers varying from white to blue to purple, so keep your eyes on the ground if you want to spot them. I noticed this lovely specimen (pictured) on the Sterling Mine Ditch trail near the Little Applegate recently, and once I noticed this plant, I suddenly realized they were everywhere!

There are six varieties of Synthyris (in the Figwort family) in Oregon, but the Snow queen is the species most commonly found at low to mid elevations. It is native to the Pacific NW, from the Puget Sound in Washington, to Northern California. With its flowers arriving so early, the Snow queen is an important source of food for pollinators and nectar eaters. This adds to the many reasons why the perennial Snow queen can be a great choice for planting in your garden.

Written by Lilia Letsch, Rogue Native Plant Partnership

Restoration Best Practices: Site Preparation Methods

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Welcome to the first post in our new series about best practices in ecological restoration. Through this series we hope to provide an accessible but thorough outline of the most important elements of implementing ecological restoration projects. Nearly everything to do with ecological restoration is complex, and there is still a lot of research being done into best practices, so it is important to keep an eye open for new information. Our goal is to outline the basics, and point you in the direction of more detailed information if you choose to go in depth on any topics.

We are starting our ecological restoration best practices series with a focus on site preparation. The importance of site preparation is often underestimated but can have a huge impact on the success of your restoration project. If you would like to go more in depth into a range of site preparation issues, we highly recommend the Xerces Society “Organic Site Preparation for Wildflower Establishment” document.

Timing

Seeds:

The time of year that you choose to disperse native plant seeds at your restoration site is extremely important. Native plant seeding usually happens either in the fall or spring in the Pacific Northwest. In Southern Oregon, fall is generally the best time to get seeds in the ground, as it gives time for in-ground stratification (cold treatment) and mimics the seeding cycles of most native plants. Early spring can also be a hard time to do site preparation if the ground is too wet, or covered in snow! But spring seeding is still a good option if site preparation is possible and the seeds you are using don’t require a deep winter stratification.

Containerized Plants:

Planting potted native plants is generally best done in the fall to provide time for settling and root growth, but early spring is an option if the ground is not too frozen and supplemental water can be provided if spring rains are not sufficient.

Surveying Your Site

Recording the plants that already exist on your site is a great opportunity to better know the plants, their needs, and ways the native plants can be protected during the site preparation phase of your project. You can just write down a list in a notebook, or keep a spreadsheet where you can update information about shifts in flowering, seeding and other interesting observations you make. It’s also a really good idea to keep a record of any weeds you can identify and get to know their lifecycles, best times of year to work on removing them, and the best practices for how to reduce their impact on your restoration site.

Weed Removal

Inadequate weed suppression can have massive impacts on the success of your ecological restoration project. For most weeds, an important control method is removing or cutting back the plant before it goes to seed. Different weed plants tend to require a variety of removal methods, used in progression. Some of these methods include solarization and sheet mulching, mowing, flame weeding or burning, and selective and careful herbicide (incl. organic) use. To dive further into best practices for removing some of our most detrimental weeds in Southern Oregon, check out these documents:

Solarization and sheet mulching: these methods are best used for smaller sites without steep slopes. Solarization utilizes large sheets of clear UV-stable plastic to cover an area containing weeds for 2-6 months in warmer climates, and up to 6 months in colder climates. Many trials have shown solarization to be an extremely successful method of weed removal, as the heat that builds up under the plastic not only kills plants, but also any weed seed bank that has built up in the soil. Occultation is a variation on solarization, where thick black plastic tarps are used to cut of access to sunlight, and produce large amounts of heat. Sheet mulching is useful in areas that are too shady for solarization to be effective, or in areas where laying out a large piece of plastic is impractical due to landscape features. Sheet mulching involves layering nitrogen and carbon based materials to smother weeds and stop the seed bank from being able to germinate. For example, a layer of nitrogen-based material (eg. animal or plant composted materials, pellets, meals, grass clippings) is then topped with a layer of carbon-based material (eg. cardboard, paper, sawdust, woodbark), and then these layers are repeated 1-2 more times, making sure that a heavier carbon-based material is on top to hold everything down. 

Occultation with silage tarps at Jackson County OSU Extension

Mowing: this can be a very useful tool in ensuring a weed population doesn’t get to produce seed. For most weeds, using a mower or weed wacker to remove any seed heads before they -are pollinated is a fast and efficient way to deplete the plant’s ability to reproduce. That said, it can be hard to time mowing so that the plant doesn’t have the time and energy to enter into the flowering stage again, while also navigating any fire season restrictions on cutting dry grass. This method involves getting to know your weeds and their reproductive cycle well, and should be used in tandem with other weed control methods.

Hand-held flame weeder

Fire: flame weeders are an excellent resource for spring-time weed control. They must be used with great caution and attendance to fire restrictions, but they are an efficient and targeted method for removing weeds without impacting surrounding native plants. If you have a large area that would benefit from prescribed fire, get in touch with your local prescribed fire practitioners to see if there are any opportunities available for this work to be done on your land by trained professionals. In Southern Oregon, The Klamath Siskiyou Oak Network may be able to point you toward prescribed fire resources.

Smother cover crops: in areas where weed pressure is low to moderate, cover crops can be used to smother weed plants. Smother cover crops can also improve soil health and provide temporary forage for wildlife, including pollinators. This technique is best used on farmland or pasture that has access to irrigation and farming equipment. Certain varieties of buckwheat, sorghum, millet, oats, rye and vetch can be planted. Depending on the cover crop planted, they can not only compete aggressively with weeds for space, but also alter the nutrients in the soil and release allelopathic substances into the soil to make it undesirable for weed germination and growth. Timing and duration of the cover crop also varies depending upon species, but is very important to ensure that weed suppression is maximized.  

Herbicides: using synthetic herbicides to control weeds is a very contentious issue, but best practices generally determine that they should be used as a last resort, and in a very targeted and well-planned manner. This is particularly important in riparian zones where herbicides can make their way into the aquatic ecosystem. Herbicides alone are rarely able to control the most problematic weeds, and should be considered part of a regime that involves other weed control methods. There are some organic herbicides available to use, and successful use depends on targeted plant species. For more information it is worth checking out the “Roadside Habitat for Monarchs: Monarch Butterflies, Weeds and Herbicides” and “Organic Pesticides: Minimizing Risks to Pollinators and Beneficial Insects” documents produced by the Xerces Society.

Ground Disturbance

If you are utilizing native seeds in your restoration project, gentle ground disturbance is a useful step to take just before you are set to distribute the seed. It helps the seed penetrate the soil more rapidly and protect it from being washed elsewhere by rain, and from browsing wildlife (birds love seed!).

Site preparation: raking in the Ashland watershed

Raking: this is a great method for restoration projects in woodlands, forest floors, sloped locations and small areas being seeded. Hand raking disturbs the ground enough to allow seed to get into the soil, but doesn’t disturb soil structure or existing native plants as much as more intensive ground disturbance. It also allows you to easily avoid any preexisting native plants that you are trying to protect.

Light tillage: you can also use a small tiller / cultivator to prepare an area for seeding. This is particularly useful in pasture and farmland. If you have a weed issues, this is a method that should be considered carefully, as ground disturbance can expose weed seed banks in the soil to the ideal conditions for growth.

Keep an eye out for our next blog post about best practices in native plant seeding for your ecological restoration project! Don’t forget that we are always updating the Rogue Native Plant Partnership Resources Library with new useful resources for ecological restoration projects – from backyards to woodlands and everything in between!

More Useful Site Preparation Resources

January Native Plant of the Month: Snowberry

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RNPP has started writing a new Native Plant of the Month column for the Rogue Basin Partnership newsletter! You can find the full RBP January newsletter here, and our Native Plant of the Month Column copied below.

Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus) is a common deciduous shrub, growing 3-6’ in riparian, swamp, moist meadow and open forest habitats, from sea to middle elevations. What makes it so lovely at this time of year is that its leafless stems are graced with clusters of bright white berries that sharply stand out against the winter landscape.

Snowberry is in the Honeysuckle family, and just like Honeysuckle berries, they are not edible to humans. The whole plant is toxic to humans, although records show that Native Americans have used the berries medicinally for a variety of purposes, and the stems for arrow shafts.

The berries have a mild saponin content, which produces foam when mixed with water. The whole plant is excellent grazing for wild and domestic animals, and birds enjoy the berries and cover that the shrubs provide. Birds also disperse the seeds widely, although the plant’s main reproductive method is to sprout new shoots from its spreading rhizome. As a result, you can often see it growing in quite substantial thickets, which provide great cover for small mammals.

If you are looking to replant a disturbed or eroded site, Snowberry is a great choice due its relatively fast growth and rhizomatous spreading. It grows in full sun, but tends to prefer some shade, and well-drained soil.

Written by Lilia Letsch, Rogue Native Plant Partnership

November Native Plant of the Month: Rubber Rabbitbrush

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RNPP has started writing a new Native Plant of the Month column for the Rogue Basin Partnership newsletter! You can find the full RBP November newsletter here, and our Native Plant of the Month Column copied below.

Native Plant of the Month: Rubber Rabbitbrush

Rubber Rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa) is a small perennial shrub that grows in a wide variety of harsh habitats from the west coast all the way to Texas and North Dakota. In the Southern Cascades you can still see the last of its flowers in November, but its prime flowering season is August-October. It’s bright and prolific yellow flowers are a very abundant source of food for pollinating insects and birds, and the leaves are an important winter food for browsing mammals.

Rubber Rabbitbrush is an excellent revegetation plant in disturbed areas, as it propagates easily and grows fast in a range of poor soil conditions. It also thrives in dry environments, making it a great choice for xeriscaping (landscapes designed to reduce or eliminate the need for irrigation). It is often found growing in desert-like habitats alongside sagebrush – both of which are in the Asteraceae (sunflower) family. Its deep growing roots also make it very useful for stabilizing ground prone to erosion or damaged by mining.

Ethnobotanical uses of the plant include making a yellow dye from the flowers, using the rubbery stems in basket making, and making tea and chewing gum. As its name suggests, it can actually be used to make rubber from the plant’s sap. Rubber production potential varies depending on the growing conditions, but it is known to produce more rubbery sap in dryer, hotter conditions.

Taxonomy fact: the “nauseosa” species name relates to the pungent smell the plant gives off when the leaves are rubbed. Some say it’s a pineapple-like aroma, while it’s more foul and rubbery to others.

 

October Native Plant of the Month: Vinegarweed

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RNPP has started writing a new Native Plant of the Month column for the Rogue Basin Partnership newsletter! You can find the full RBP October newsletter here, and our Native Plant of the Month Column copied below.

Native Plant of the Month: Vinegarweed

While walking through open grassy woodlands and prairies during late summer, you may have encountered a strong smell of minty vinegar on the breeze, and maybe even heard the hum of insects that eagerly congregate on the annual herb commonly known as Vinegarweed. The attractive purple flowers are an important late summer pollen source for many insects, with flowers known to bloom into October.

This sun-loving herb is quite shade intolerant, and prefers dry soils below 2,200 ft between Washington and Baja California. It is known to have phytotoxic properties that prevent other plants from growing happily around it. This could make it an excellent plant for competing with invasive herbs. It is also unlikely to be palatable to browsing animals due to its highly fragrant oils. Seeds mature and can be collected in late fall, and sown directly (raked into soil) in fall or early spring.

Vinegarweed is known to be highly medicinal, and has been used by west coast tribes for many healing purposes, including for treatment of colds, throat inflammation, headaches, infected sores and aching teeth.

The species name Lanceolatum means “lance-shaped”, which relates to the shape of Vinegarweed’s leaves. It’s always nice when the scientific name relates to the plant’s appearance! Its lovely little purple flowers are also a great way to identify the plant, but the easiest way to identify Vinegarweed by far is its powerful fragrance – you can’t miss it!

USDA Plant Guide: https://plants.usda.gov/plantguide/pdf/cs_trla4.pdf

Upper Table Rock Seed Blitz and Yellow Starthistle Pulls

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June 2017 – June 2019

For the third year in a row, volunteers with The Nature Conservancy and the Rogue Native Plant Partnership gathered on the slopes of Upper Table Rock to collect wildflower seed for future restoration projects and hand pull the highly invasive yellow starthistle.

Yellow starthistle (Centaurea solstitialis) is an exotic annual herbaceous plant in the knapweed genus. The seeds from this plant can germinate whenever there is enough moisture in the soil. It starts as a small bluish green rosette and grows slowly through the winter months. Once the heat of the summer comes this plant bolts to produce yellow flowers subtended by thorny spikes.

Although yellow starthistle is an annual species that dies every year, it is able to produce a long taproot that depletes the soil of moisture making it nearly impossible for native species to grow nearby. This species is particularly difficult to manage because it can continue to produce flowers and seeds even after continual mowing or grazing by producing flowers very low to the ground. At Upper Table Rocks, years of volunteer-based hand-pulling has resulted in the almost complete eradication of this plant from the wildflower meadows at the site!

Ecological restoration involves many steps. The first step is often to change the disturbance patterns at the site (in this case stop the yellow starthistle invasion) followed by seeding the site with native wildflower and grass seeds. These precious seeds are hard to come by and expensive in Southern Oregon. To help tackle these challenges, volunteers with The Rogue Native Plant Partnership help to collect wildflower and grass seeds from native plants nearby. Once enough seed has been collected, it will either be used directly on the site or grown out at a nearby farm (increased) if more seed is needed than can reasonably be collected from wild plants.

AUTHOR:

Kathryn Prive
Rogue Native Plant Partnership

 

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Restoring huckleberry habitat as a cultural resource

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On September 26th a large group of volunteers including Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians members, Forest Service and BLM employees and Rogue Native Plant Partnership volunteers converged on a recently burnt area just outside the town of Prospect in the High Cascades to help replant 1500 mountain huckleberry (Vaccinium membranaceum) plants.

The area was burned during the 2017 Broken Lookout fire. The well-established plants were grown by the Forest Service’s nursery in Dorena from seed fortuitously collected onsite only two weeks before the Broken Lookout Fire started. This project is a collaboration between the Forest Service, the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians and the Rogue Native Plant Partnership to restore an important cultural food resource.

It was a brisk but beautiful day up in the mountains, and after a smudging ceremony led by members of the Cow Creek Tribe, everyone got their planting equipment ready and hiked into the burn area to get huckleberries into the ground. In addition, monitoring plots were surveyed as part of a multi-year effort to obtain data that will help develop an understanding of the success of the replanting efforts.  There are still 8000 more plants to go in the ground, with that work being completed by contractors at the time of writing.

Huckleberries continue to be an incredibly important cultural food resource for Native Americans, and so many community members and government agencies coming together to support the replanting efforts is a powerful acknowledgement of understanding the huckleberry’s cultural significance. Thank you to everyone who came out for this great replanting effort!

AUTHOR:

Lilia Letsch
Rogue Native Plant Partnership

 

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Collecting milkweed seedpods for local pollinators and landowners

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Ten Rogue Valley community members come together at the Forest Service’s J. Herbert Stone Nursery in Central Point to volunteer for a milkweed seedpod collecting event on September 9th. Even with a decent breeze sending the seed fluff (known more officially as “coma”) flying everywhere, we still managed to collect large amounts of both narrowleaf milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis) and showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa) seed pods. The beds of narrowleaf and showy milkweed have been funded by the US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS), and the seeds will be used in special seed mixes being prepared for landowners to enhance pollinator habitat on private lands in the region.

Milkweed is a fantastic perennial flowering herb that is much loved by many pollinators, including the at-risk Monarch butterfly. Not too long-ago milkweed was an incredibly widespread plant, but has been eradicated in many areas in favor of agricultural crops, and now faces a lot of competition from introduced invasive plants. Luckily it is an easy plant to grow, and efforts are being put into introducing it back into the landscape on a broader scale. It couldn’t happen soon enough for the Monarch!

Many thanks to all of the volunteers who came out to help collect milkweed seeds and contribute to important pollinator habitat restoration!

Interesting taxonomy fact: In 1753, Swedish Botanist Carl Linnaeus named the genus Asclepias after Asclepius, the Greek god of healing.

AUTHOR:

Lilia Letsch
Rogue Native Plant Partnership

 

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Restoring disturbed ground on Mt Ashland with native forbs

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June 2nd, 2019

We had a fantastic day on Mt Ashland on June 1st, working with a group of volunteers to plant out 4,500 native plant plugs in an area next to the Mt Ashland lodge that was recently disturbed by heavy machinery. Thanks to the folks at the Mt Ashland Ski Lodge for helping organize volunteers and providing snacks and drinks for everyone!

The plants were grown by Silver Springs Nursery in the Applegate, from seed that we collected in 2018 on Mt Ashland. The species that were planted out included Oregon Sunshine (Eriophyllum lanatum), Coyote Mint (Monardella sheltonii), Yarrow (Achillea millefolium), Roemer’s Fescue (Festuca roemeri), Squirretail grass (Elymus elymoides) and Sulphur Buckwheat (Eriogonum umbellatum). Once grown in, these plants will create a beautiful meadow of wildflowers and native bunch grasses, and great habitat for pollinators and birds!

Post-planting care will involve regular watering for the first year, and ensuring that the area is cordoned off from the public so that the small plants won’t be damaged under foot. We look forward to monitoring the survival rate and growth of these plants, and enjoying the first flush of wildflowers next spring.

Thanks to the amazing volunteers!

AUTHOR:

Lilia Letsch
Rogue Native Plant Partnership

 

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Growing plants for seed production at Long Shadow Fields

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April 25, 2019

Long Shadow Fields in Talent is one of a handful of local farms working with the Rogue Native Plant Partnership to develop a new model of native forb seed production. Seed for native forbs – herbs, and grasses – can often be hard to come by in the amounts required for local ecological restoration projects. Growing such plants out for seeds is often cost prohibitive due to the amount of time it can take for plants to develop to the flowering stage, and the amount of labor required to harvest the seed. But through a non-profit / small farm partnership, we are hoping to alleviate the risks and pressures of growing native seed for restoration projects in the Rogue Basin.

Gary Kliewer at Long Shadow Fields grew a selection of native herbs and forbs from seeds that RNPP supplied from our wild seed harvesting events. A volunteer planting event was organized to help get a lot of the small native herbs in the ground. RNPP will continue to support Gary’s native seed production through volunteer labor, funding through grants, and technical support from a network of other experts in the Pacific Northwest.

The volunteer planting event on April 24th was a great success, we planted hundreds of native plugs and did some great networking and knowledge sharing. Thank you so much to everyone that came and helped! Keep an eye open for future events at Long Shadow Fields and other local farmers we are working with to grow regionally adapted native herbs and grasses for ecological restoration projects happening in our community.

Planting Wyethia into straight rows for ease of mechanical weeding.

AUTHOR:

Lilia Letsch
Rogue Native Plant Partnership

 

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