Within the lush summer undergrowth alongside a vegetated creek in the Wasatch Plateau area of the Manti-La Sal National Forest, Carl Rothfels, director of the Intermountain Herbarium and associate professor in the department of biology at USU, diverges from the path to investigate a large, showy plant with brilliant indigo flowers.
“Wolf killer. Yeah, and one of them is called wolfsbane. Yeah, I think we call it wolfsbane as well. That's beautiful. It has these very strange flowers, also called monkshood," Rothfels says. "You see how it looks like a hood, a tiny hood? You can almost imagine a little mini monk wearing that.”
After pinpointing the plant’s location, making observations, taking photos, and of course jotting down information in a small physical field-book, with trowel in hand, Rothfels kneels in the soil to collect the notoriously poisonous plant.
“So it's a monkshood and like I said I'm gonna go here," he says. "I forget their underground parts. So they might be one of these species that has a rhizome. At least the ground is easy to dig in here. We're not going to be lazy botanists and just take the top part … we’re gonna get some exercise. Oh, that was not too bad. Right. So there we go.”
After extracting the plant, he then begins to prepare it.
“We’ll put in a ziplock so it doesn't wilt or anything like that and keep it in good shape," Rothfels explains. "Then, at the end of the day we'll have a pressing party. So we'll turn this into a herbarium specimen.”
The plant is then transferred in Rothfels’ backpack and he moves on down the trail.
“What are-what are we doing here? We're here as part of the Intermountain Botanical Foray," he says. "So we're going to spend, or we are spending, this long weekend exploring the botanical diversity of this area. We are having a lot of fun. We're collecting a lot of plants. We're making a lot of iNaturalist observations.”
2024 marks the second annual Intermountain Botanical Foray, which is run out of the Intermountain Herbarium at Utah State University. This year it's hosted by Snow College at their Great Basin Station, a renovated U.S. Forest Service research facility in the highlands in Ephraim.
The foray and its members have one official goal.
“We are here to document the plants of this area," Rothfels says.
But that’s only the official goal.
“The secret goal, the most important goal is the secret goal, which is to help build a community: to get botanists and people who are excited about plants hanging out together, exploring natural areas, helping to increase appreciation for some of the beautiful areas that the Intermountain Region has to offer, to help build expertise in botany," Rothfels says. "A lot of people have a passion for plants, but maybe don't have a community to share that passion with. So this provides a venue for that.”
All through the forest amateur, expert, and aspiring botanists and naturalists of all ages and backgrounds scour the earth identifying herbaceous plants.
Julia Hobbie, a PhD student studying under Rothfels, photographs a specimen.
“This is the same mystery character we haven't identified yet," Hobbie says. "I'm just taking an iNaturalist observation. We have a mix of really old technology and really new technology here on the foray."
In addition to her interest in botany, it turns out she was instrumental in planning the foray.
“Yeah, actually before I decided to become a graduate student with Carl, he told me that he was planning to start this foray," Hobbie says. "And it was part of the reason that I wanted to work with him.”
The foray itself started daily with hikes in the morning and went into the afternoon when members pressed their specimens.
Leila Shultz, professor emeritus at USU and the previous curator of Intermountain Herbarium for 20 years, carefully places two labeled specimens between sandwiches of newspaper and cardboard. She also removes a small sample for DNA sequencing.
“So both the dominant species the woody things, the sagebrush, which is a mountain sagebrush and the rabbit brush, and the associated species," Shultz says. "So our goal is to collect 10 different things a day, with two specimens each.”
All told, the group hopes to collect more than 100 specimens and observe around 3,000 individual plants representing potentially 300 species or more.
And if you personally are interested in the foray then you’re in luck. Not only is it set to continue annually, but it’s also open to anyone who’s interested.
“We're planning to do it annually. It's a long weekend, a botanical bonanza, open to anyone who wants to come, whether you're new to plants, or an old hat, whether you work with plants professionally, or in your free time, would you want to come and get to know each other and look at cool plants together," Hobbie says.
“Come and join us. You don't have to be an expert. I think people are intimidated. But this is a fantastic opportunity to learn about plants with other people who are excited about them. We have a whole range of expertise," Rothfels says. "Everyone apologizes for themselves and says, you know, I'm not really an expert, but you don't need to be an expert to be in an event like this. You just need to be interested in seeing things and documenting them. And so yeah, please come join us.”
Click here to learn more about the Intermountain Botanical Foray.
Rothfels would also like to thank Snow College, the Utah Native Plant Society, and the National Science Foundation (award #2144011) for supporting the 2024 Foray.
