Category: Blog

11/12/19 – 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: 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.

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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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.

AUTHOR:

Lilia Letsch
Rogue Native Plant Partnership

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