Volunteers help save rare plants across Minnesota
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A stiff breeze blows the mosquitos away as six people gather on a narrow gravel road next to nearly 500 acres of public land in Wilkin County.
“Good morning everybody. We’re looking for pleated gentian. I have a few ID guides,” said Deanna Leigh, a community science coordinator with the Department of Natural Resources.
Her job is to get the Minnesota PlantWatch program up and running.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources maintains a database with thousands of records of rare plants across the state, mostly compiled by the biological survey that’s been documenting species across all Minnesota counties since 1987.
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But many of those records are decades old and a new citizen science project is working to update the records. The information can help land managers and scientists protect and preserve rare species.
The gentiana affinis, or pleated gentian, they’re seeking in Wilkin County was last documented on this land in 1980. It’s a small plant, often less that a foot tall with funnel shaped 1-inch purple flowers.
“That purple flower is really a pretty distinct shade of purple compared to some of the other things you'll see out here,” Leigh tells the searchers.
There’s a wide range of experience in the group, from a professional botanist with the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum to a retired attorney with a half dozen days of rare plant searching under his belt.
They spread out in a line and start working their way into the prairie slowly moving toward the far side, about a quarter mile away.
Eyes scan the ground through the tall prairie grass for a flash of purple.
“Especially if it’s something you’ve never seen before, it’s pretty tricky,” said Leigh. “Usually finding that first plant is the hardest, this one being a fairly small plant in this tall vegetation, finding it is hard.”
“There’s times where we’ve given up and are walking back to the car, and then you find it. So it is a bit of luck,” she added.
Using trained volunteers means more boots on the ground, and more eyes on the flora.
Vince King is the retired attorney from St. Paul who got his PlantWatch training this spring.
“When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time in the woods and prairies looking for wildflowers, and hadn’t done that for 30 or 40 years,” he said. “So it’s kind of exciting to do that again.”
King has yet to find a rare plant, but he’s getting a chance to see new places across the state where he's lived for 66 years.
He’s been to a cedar bog in the Chippewa National Forest, and on this August day is getting a close up look at a prairie landscape.
“So this kind of gives me an opportunity to see stuff that I would just normally drive by, and it’s been really lovely,” he said.
Four ecological regions, or biomes, converge in Minnesota, giving it a unique blend of plant life. And Deanna Leigh says that means there are more rare plants than in many other states.
“Our rare plants occur all across the state, which is nice, because that means we can recruit people from everywhere,” she said. “There’s a lot of ground to cover."
The DNR database contains thousands of sites where rare plants are documented.
PlantWatch is a partnership of the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and the Minnesota DNR. Collaborators include the Bell Museum of Natural History, the Minnesota Native Plant Society and the Minnesota Master Naturalist program.
Landscape Arboretum curator of endangered plants David Remucal said the DNR simply doesn’t have enough resources to keep track of thousands of rare plants in locations all across the state.
“It has taken them a few decades to really get the first comprehensive survey done of Minnesota. And so just thinking about going back and re-surveying all those rare plants, that’s very daunting,” he said.
Locating rare plants in bloom makes it easier to return later to collect seeds and bank the genetic material.
“Seeds are a really convenient way of storing a lot of genetics in a really small package,” said Remucal. “And for a lot of species you can store them for a pretty long time, decades, potentially even centuries, if they’re stored correctly.”
A seed bank can ensure plants aren’t lost, and the genetic diversity will help future efforts to reintroduce or expand plant populations.
The pleated gentian in western Minnesota is at the eastern edge of its range.
“When we have these species that are on the edge of their range, a lot of times they have unique characteristics,” explained Leigh as she moved across the prairie. “They might have important genetic information that allows them to live in a place like this.”
Those genetics could help understand why plants do better in some areas than others.
“And especially as we look at challenges like climate change there could be really important adaptations that these species have in this location that they don’t have somewhere else and that actually might help the species survive into the future,” said Leigh.
Minnesota PlantWatch started last year with funding from the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund. The project trained 19 volunteers the first summer. This year 50 volunteers have been trained.
They learn about search methods, and agree they won’t share the locations of rare plants to prevent poaching of endangered or threatened species.
Organizers say PlantWatch could sustain up to 100 volunteers across the state. They are hopeful the project be funded long term.
More than an hour into the hunt in Wilkin County, a faint cry drifts across the prairie from the far edge of the search area.
Volunteer Andrea Nistler has found the rare pleated gentian.
Everyone carefully converges as she crouches protectively over the plant.
“Oh yes. Nice work, Andrea. That's awesome,” exclaims Leigh.
This is Nistler’s first rare plant find on only her second day in the field as a volunteer.
“Pretty exciting,” she said. “Very pretty flower.”
Her find will update the 44-year-old record for the species on this land. It will be marked with GPS coordinates so the next time someone comes to search for the pleated gentian it will be much easier to find.