Program Summary: Nov 14, Seeds for Education & Outreach

** ARCHIVED POST – LINKS AND IMAGES MAY NOT WORK**

Our program tonight was by Minnette Marr, Conservation Program Manager at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.  Minnette presented Seeds for Education and Outreach sharing information on collecting and saving seeds.

image of person

Minnette has an interesting background being involved with wetland restoration at Aquarena Springs on the San Marcos River in San Marcos and the Regional Seed bank. Now she is involved with Education and Outreach at LBJWC.

She taught us how to save native seeds, how to store them and how to use them in sensitive areas. We learned to determine a plant’s conservation status by looking at www.NatureServe.org. She went on to tell us how to collect a variety of seeds from the same species to get the most diversity and how to collect seeds from Threatened (S2) or Endangered (S1) species.

Minnette is obviously passionate about her work and gives many others a desire to save seeds important to the biodiversity of our environment.   You can contact her through the LBJWC or on iNaturalist  (www.inaturalist.org/people/beeblossomseeds).

View Minnette’s presentation below.

[embeddoc url=”https://npsot.org/wp/wilco/files/2019/11/19.1114-Seeds_LBJWC-Minnette-Marr.pdf” download=”all”]


You can see the November 14, 2019 business presentation slides here.

** ARCHIVED POST – LINKS AND IMAGES MAY NOT WORK**

Field Trip Report: Garey Park Plant Survey 10 of 12

** ARCHIVED POST – LINKS AND IMAGES MAY NOT WORK**

— by Vicky Husband

Garey Park

Eight field trip attendees enjoyed a mild and peaceful evening walk through an eastern off-trail portion of grazing land ringed with Cedar elms, Spanish Oaks and native Pecans. We began by crossing a culvert with spent Maximilian sunflowers (Helianthus maximiliani), Broomweed (Amphiachyris amoena), and the seed burs of Rough cockleburr (Xanthium strumarium), affectionately known as Porcupine eggs.  An open field of predominately KR Bluestem (Bothriochloa ischaemum) revealed hints of fall blooming Heath aster (Symphyotrichum ericoides) with stems that turn maroon in winter.  This field sports a couple of specimen Huisache trees (Acacia farnesiana), with one exceeding fifteen feet in height.  After the field, we cut though the Ashe juniper to the exposed river bank below. The setting sun enticed us to use the trail up from the river bench, where we observed some isolated but interesting specimens of narrow-leaved Sneezeweed (Helenium amarum), White tridens (Tridens albescens), Silver bluestem (Bothriochloa saccharoides) and Little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium). Hoping to add a new species, two went back to investigate a prostrate and hoary vervain-type specimen along the trail.  Join us in December and January on a free Tuesday for the final two months of our plant surveys of Garey Park in Georgetown, Texas.

** ARCHIVED POST – LINKS AND IMAGES MAY NOT WORK**

2019 Fall Plant Sale Success-THANKS!

** ARCHIVED POST – LINKS AND IMAGES MAY NOT WORK**

— by Beth Erwin

image of plant sale volunteers
Fall 2019, Friday morning crew. Photo by Bob Kamper.

Pictured here is the Friday morning booth crew, except for Bob Kamper, who was taking the picture.  We were all fresh and ready to go.  By noon, we were tired!  Sales were brisk from the get-go and remained steady until closing time Saturday evening.  We shattered our previous Fall Plant Sale records, helped by close to 500 customers.  It’s always a pleasure to visit, encourage, counsel, and commiserate with our regular and new booth visitors.

The NPSOT-Wilco chapter has such a fine group of volunteers.  They are eager to help in the months prior to the sale with labeling and preparing the plants for sale, loading and unloading, and keeping the booth looking great.

Proceeds from the sale fund our native plant display gardens, native plant pollinator project gardens, chapter meeting speakers, our award-winning native plant identification signs in Williamson County parks, our work with the NPSOT Native Plant Certification Program classes, and equipment and supplies that help further our goals promoting the use of native plants.

Thank you to all who volunteered countless hours to make this such a success.  We really appreciate the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center for allowing us to participate in the sale each spring and fall.

Kindest regards,
Beth Erwin
NPSOT-Wilco Plant Sale Coordinator

** ARCHIVED POST – LINKS AND IMAGES MAY NOT WORK**