Michael, Claire & Alexis Beckley

William Beckman

Eileen & Richard Bourassa

Chuck & Patti Buffett

Rose Marie Caughran

Agnes B. Chegwyn

Anne DeLano

Barbara Drake

Patricia Farrell

Jo Goodman

Jacqueline Groth

Dave Hanson

Marg & Andrew Johansen

Jim Kreutzbender

Laura McMasters

Erin Rainey

A.P. Salkield

Kathryn & Brian Spyksma

Michael Terramin

Rob Tracey

Miriam & Richard Wagoner

J. Chris Pires

Steve Adamson

Deirdre Jackson

Eric N. & Brinda N. Wold

Beverly Betzer

Charlette Chastain

Sandra Tye

Walt Lucas

Robert Obedzinski

Gregory B. Reddell

Faith Wilkins

Joseph Mosca

John W. Phillip

Mary Preston

Robert Baker

Judith A. Castle

Anita Cate

Lindsey Caudle

Jude Crockett

Sally Deleuw

Eric & Kimberly Geisler

Sally Hacker

Lyn Jackson

Mark Johnson

Lewis Lewin

Jolinda Osborne

Jeff Owens

Karen Peterson

Robert Springer

Ken Stowell

Chris & Dick Thoms

Laurie Walden

Lynn Wilson

Pat Dieli

Lois A. Griffith

Thomas R. Phillips

Carol & Robby Robinson

Karen Farmer

Oregon's Rare Wildflower Poster depicts Punchbowl Falls and three of the Columbia River Gorge's endemic wildflowers. Text on the back describes the natural history of the Gorge and the mission of the NPSO. Available from Stu Garrett, 21663 Paloma Dr., Bend, OR 97701 ( policy). Individual may order posters at $12 each, plus $3 per order for shipping. Posters are mailed in tubes. Chapter treasures may contact Stu for wholesale prices to chapters.

NPSO Window Stickers are decals with NPSO's trillium logo in green over an opaque white background, for use inside car windows. Available from Stu Garrett, $1, minimum order five.

NPSO's Original Wildflower Poster depicts 13 Oregon wildflowers in a striking artist's rendition. Soon to be a collector's item. Available from Stephanie Schulz, 84603 Bristow Rd., Pleasant Hill, OR 97455, $5 each, plus $3 per order for shipping. Posters are mailed in tubes.

Conservation and Management of Native Plants and Fungi: Proceedings of an Oregon Conference on the Conservation and Mangement of Native Vascular Plants, Bryophytes, and Fungi. Edited by Thomas N. Kaye, Aaron Liston, Rhoda M. Love, Daniel L. Louma, Robert J. Meinke, and Mark V. Wilson, with a foreword by Reed F. Noss. Available from NPSO Conference Proceedings, 1803 Cedar St., La Grande, OR 97850. ( policy). $20 plus $5 for shipping for the first copy, $2.50 for shipping, each additional copy.

The following is the first in a series of three articles in which NPSO/OD interns discuss their activities during the 1998 field season. Interns were selected from a pool of applicants and worked with scientists from the Oregon Department of Agriculture/OSU Plant Conservation Biology Program to carry out research related to threatened and endangered species in Oregon. Project locations ranged from coastal beaches to serpentines of southwestern Oregon to the eastside's high desert. Interns were jointly funded by NPSO, state, and federal dollars and plan to use their experience to further their careers in botany and biology. What follows here is Madi Novak's article on the breeding system of Cimicifuga elata, Part I. Part II, by fellow intern Lisa Karst, will be presented in next month's Bulletin. Thanks again to NPSO for contributing to botanical education an work experience.

Tom Kaye

Oregon Department of Agriculture

________

We began this summer's field season in southern Oregon's Illinois Valley chasing potential pollinators of a bulrush sedge (Scirpus criniger) among serpentine fen plants such as the aromatic rhododendron (Rhododendron occidentale) and the carnivorous pitcher plant (Darlingtonia californica). The sedge family (Cyperaceae) is generally wind pollinated. Standing among this sedge population, however, we noticed the plants were visited by a variety of insects (an observation made earlier by Tom Kaye, Barbara Wilson, and Peter Zika). Kaye, fellow intern Lisa Karst and I decided to follow up on this observation and conduct a bit of research. We colored the bulrush heads with a dry powdered dye that simulates pollen, and can be distributed to receptive stigmas by insects the same way a pollen grain is. The dye glows under ultra violet light, so we returned after dark with a blacklight and were excited to see confirmation of what we had suspected during the day. Pollinators had picked up the grains dye and transferred them to other S. criniger heads. This bulrush did indeed seem to make use of insects to cross-pollinate.

Lisa Karst and I were so enticed by this research that we immediately decided to conduct a study of our own. At first we developed a bizarre scheme that involved more than twenty hours of travel time, and would demand our attention that very same weekend. Thankfully, Tom Kaye nudged us gently towards a more realistic project.

We first visited our subject, tall bugbane (Cimicifuga elata), in a beautiful mature forest near Corvallis, Oregon. Even though it is a fairly large herbaceous perennial, sometimes reaching two meters, it can at first be difficult to spot. Its leaves can easily be confused with baneberry (Actea rubra) or thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus), both of which can be found right alongside the bugbane. The inflourescences are delicate, a white raceme with flowers including only the bare necessities: pistils and stamens. When the plant is in the shade, a person could almost look right through it, but when it captures a ray of sun, it reflects and glows, catching the eye. We walked through the bugbane's preferred ecosystemÛa wet, north-facing slope--and were able to spot perhaps fifteen blooming plants. The surrounding vegetation consisted of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii ssp. menziesii), big leaf maple (Acer macrophyllum), oregon-grape (Berberis nervosa), sword fern (Polystichum munitum), inside-out flower (Vancouveria hexandra) and wild ginger (Asarum caudatum). It was dark and cool in the understory and we saw very few insects at all. When we did find a potential pollinator landing on a tall bugbane raceme, it was usually during that brief period of time when a ray of sun was able to penetrate the canopy.

Tall bugbane has been determined to be largely geitonogamous (Pellmyr, 1986). Geitonogamy is self-pollination through a pollinator vector. An insect, in this case usually a bumblee bee, lands on a flower, is dusted with pollen, and transfers it to a pistil on the same plant thereby self-pollinating. Due to the small number and low density of bugbane plants in the northern Oregon population, and to the relatively few number of pollinators present, geitonogamy seems to be an appropriate solution to the lack of pollination vectors. However, there are much larger populations of tall bugbane in southern Oregon with a greater density where pollinators have been observed faithfully visiting these plants. Our mission was to test the hypothesis that pollinator behavior, and possibly C. elata breeding systems, differ among northern and southern populations. To this end, observed pollinator activity directly and by using pollen analog dyes.

We began our research in the north. First, we observed and documented pollinator activity. Then we attempted to trace pollinator activity with dye analogs. We took notes on time, temperature and weather conditions in an effort to observe the northern and southern populations under similar circumstances. We then followed the activity of the pollinators in the area. When spotting a possible pollinator on a tall bugbane raceme, we watched and documented its path as long as it was in sight. After completing our observations we embarked on the dye analog study. We chose three different colors, in the event one of the colors attracted or repelled certain pollinators. In deciding how to apply the indicator dye to the stamens we came up with a few good ideas and a few absurd ones, the champion of which entailed affixing a dead bee to a toothpick, covering it with the dye and rubbing it on the flowers. We later discovered that this procedure had actually been done in pollination studies of other plants. After trying a few different processes and dying quite a bit of the countryside, we settled on a procedure of bending the raceme into a small ziplock bag, brushing the dye onto the flowers with a paintbrush and then carefully allowing the stem to right itself. This worked well, with relatively little dye escaping into the surrounding area, and the ziplock bag provided a handy place to quarantine the toxic covered brushes. We waited a minimum of twenty-four hours, returning to the location after dark with a black light to check surrounding bugbane racemes for signs of glowing dye. We measured the distances between the racemes we dyed and those we were checking for transferred dye. Because there were only about fifteen bugbane plants at the northern site and because we wanted to avoid robbing the location of most of this years' reproductive possibilities, we collected only individual flowers instead of entire racemes. With tweezers wiped clean with alcohol we plucked flowers in a straight line up one side of the raceme. This proved arduous and frustrating because the flowers consistently stuck to the tweezers and deteriorated as we were attempting to release them in our carefully labeled ziplock bags. Upon returning to the lab, we examined these flowers and racemes under a microscope for miniscule particles of dye.

When we arrived in southern Oregon near Ashland the size and density of the tall bugbane population astounded us. The number of plants present numbered about 8,000 individuals. The environment and morphology of the plant exhibited notable differences to northern populations. The forest had been thinned at least fifty years ago, making much more sun available to the understory. The bugbane was taller with many more reproductive stems and racemes. Even at first glance we could tell that there were more pollinators buzzing about, visiting the bugbane and the neighboring snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus). In general, we repeated the procedure we followed near Corvallis, but not in regard to flower collecting. Due to our less than pleasing flower collecting experience in the north, and also because there were a large number of Bugbane plants at the Southern location, we harvested whole racemes from those plants we wished to examine more closely. After both observation and dye analog research were completed, we captured insects that were pollinating the tall bugbane and found four species of bee, two hover flies (Syrphus spp.) and a muscid fly.

Lisa Karst will submit the results of our combined study in the next Bulletin. I would like to thank the Native Plant Society of Oregon, Bob Meinke and Tom Kaye for making this internship available and allowing me to benefit from it. Tom Kaye especially deserves my gratitude for his guidance in this study and for his help and patience throughout the summer.

I'm glad to have worked with Lisa Karst on this study and enjoyed sharing my summer with co-intern Jeff Stephens.

Madi Novak

On July 25, 1998, there was a memorial service for Keith at the Mosier Grange. The same hall where we held the annual NPSO meeting in May, and we awarded Keith with thanks for extensive lifetime service to NPSO. Jerry Igo officiated. Jerry did a wonderful job of sharing with us many aspects of Keith's life and encouraging those of us at the service to share stories about Keith and how much he meant to us and how much we will miss him.

Keith started the NPSO chapter in Mosier and taught many people including many boy scouts how to identify native plants. He started the flower show in Mosier which has been held over 20 years and introduced many, many people to the beauty and immense variety of NW plants. He traveled many miles photographing plants and taking many of us on adventurous wild flower hikes visiting sites of rare and unusual plants. While recently our chapter has focused the flower show on the Columbia River Gorge, Keith had traveled hundreds of miles to put together a show that included flowers from the coast and eastern Oregon; his slide collection is maintained by Barbara Robinson, president, and the Mid-Columbia Chapter.

Besides working extensively with the boy scouts, he was also very interested in art and was an accomplished painter and supported the Art Association in The Dalles, Oregon. His parents moved to the Mosier from Montana (and other places) where his sister, Montana, was born. She attended the memorial service. His foster son, who had nursed Keith over the last year or two, was unable to attend as he was working the short fishing season in Alaska.

Keith's and Mary's wedding picture, shows a dashing young man with a black goatee and a lovely young bride dressed in clothes from the 1800's. In their later years, he nursed her faithfully through her difficult illness with

lupus. Keith is deeply missed by those of us lucky enough to have known him, and every spring when the wild flowers bloom again he will be remembered.

Krista Thie, Mid-Columbia Chapter

OSU agricultural chemist, Philip Whanger, believes that a stinky wild leek - ramp - might be adapted to fight cancer.

To ward off breast, prostate, colon and lung cancers, human beings use about 300 micrograms of selenium a day. Bulbs of ramp (Allium tricoccum) absorb and hold more selenium from the soil in less time than their cancer-fighting cousins - onions, garlic, or broccoli.

Wild ramp grows only in Appalachia, at high elevations, from northern Georgia into Canada. This spring Professor Whanger is transplanting wild ramp into test plots in Corvallis.

His research on tumors in rats is supported by the Linus Pauling Institute and the Selenium-Tellurium Foundation. Other research on ramp is being conducted at Roswell Park Cancer Institute at SUNY-Albany, N.Y., and at VPI-Blacksburg.

Professor Whanger, born and reared in Appalachia, returned home to take a new taste at "ramp suppers" where "they serve Îem up with ham and brown beans." Everyone eats the smelly plant - mostly out of self-defense, he said. But, if the wild plant's early promise is realized, ramp will be grown and eaten for health-defense.

[Adapted from The Oregon Stater, Vol. 82, No. 1, February, 1998, by Jim Long, Umpqua Valley Chapter]

The 1999 Seed and Book Catalogue of the New England Wild Flower Society is now available. There are in it more than 200 varieties of seeds and spores, including plants for woodland, wetland and meadow. And they range from the easy-to-grow, such as Jack-in-the-pulpit, black-eyed Susan and cardinal flower to the more difficult, such as trilliums, ferns, gentians and pitcher plants.

There are four different mixes - a New England mix, for general growing conditions, mixes for dry and moist conditions, and a tall grass mix.

Requests for the catalogue must be received by March 1, and seed sales end on March 15. Some seed supplies are limited. To order, send $2.50 to: Seeds, New England Wild Flower Society, Garden in the Woods, 180 Hemenway Road, Framingham, MA 01701.

A Conference on the ecology, conservation and management of vernal pool ecosystems was held in Sacramento, California in June, 1996. It was jointly sponsored by the California Native Plant Society, the Western Section of the Wildlife Society and the California Chapter of the Society for Ecological Restoration.

Now the proceedings of that conference - Vernal Pool Ecosystems - have been published. The thirty papers (285 pages, 8.5 x 11.5 inches) in this volume cover the soils, plants, animals, restoration and creation of vernal pools. It costs $20 per copy, plus $4.50 shipping for the first volume and $1.00 for each additional volume.

It may be ordered from CNPS, 1722 J Street, Suite 17, Sacramento, CA 95814. For credit card orders, call ( policy), or fax ( policy).

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NPSO Webmaster: Lisa Karst, lisa@NPSOregon.org

© Copyright 1998 Native Plant Society of Oregon, All Rights Reserved

Last Modified December 13, 1998