In early June we had the pleasure of hosting three students in the Native American Summer Mentorship Program for a couple days. Harley, Cathaline, and Baahozhooni are students at USU-Blanding and spent four weeks this summer in Logan getting hands-on lab and research experience. It was wonderful to get to know them, hear about their interests and perspectives, and introduce them to our research! The first day we focused on fieldwork with a plant collecting trip up Temple Fork in Logan Canyon; the second day was lab work involving PCR amplification and gel electrophoresis on DNA from Cystopteris samples as part of Chinedum’s research. Then the students were off to the Rushworth Lab for the rest of the week, to see a more experiment-driven type of botanical research, while the Rothfels Lab headed off on the Intermountain Botanical Foray. Sadly we have no pictures from the lab day, but here’s some of what we got up to the first day!
We started the day by checking out the old beaver dams on Temple Fork. Though we didn’t see any beavers that day, there was lots of evidence of their ecological effect – angled cuts on willows and slow, meandering streams.
We documented the biodiversity with some iNaturalist posts and a few specimen collections.
Then we headed to the Intermountain Herbarium to press our samples. We all learned first-hand why the genus Balsamorhiza (balsamroot) has its name – the taproot has a strong but pleasant piney smell! Balsamorhiza macrophylla (cutleaf balsamroot) pictured here.
