Written by: Ethan Perry
This year’s plant foray, an annual collecting event hosted by ANPE, had a new twist. In addition to providing plant specimens for the UMD Olga Lakela herbarium teaching collection, it also contributed to efforts by the Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory to nominate the park for additional
protection under the Duluth Natural Areas Program. We were also featured in a Duluth News Tribune article! You can read about it here.
Led by Paul Hlina, who also led last year’s foray at Lester River, we met at the first Hawk Ridge overlook under smoky skies. Working as a volunteer for the Observatory, Paul is making repeated visits to the ridge this season to develop a complete list of flora of the different habitats of the park. On June 7th we all got to help him out.
We broke into two groups, with Paul leading one up to a small rock outcrop and ANPE president Kelly Beaster leading another down into a hardwood forest. At the outcrop Paul sent participants out across the brushy opening to collect whatever plants we could find. When we brought collections back to him, he bagged them in ziplocks and kept a running list. Kelly used the new ANPE cloth plant press to make collections right in the field.
After meeting back at the overlook, Paul set up an assembly line of folks to take the plants out of the bags, write collection numbers on sheets of newspaper, lay the plants carefully in the paper, and then press them between layers of cardboard and blotter paper. The hardwoods group had already pressed their collections back at the collection site and just needed to transfer the collection to a regular plant press.
Altogether we collected about 90 plant specimens for Paul’s project and the herbarium. These included many invasive species like hawkweed (Hieracium spp.) and honeysuckle (Lonicera spp.), but also many natives like serviceberry (Amelanchier spp.), chokecherry (Prunus virginiana), yarrow (Achillea millefolium), false melic grass (Schizachne purpurascens), and false Solomon’s seal (Maiathemum racemosum).
ANPE would like to thank the City of Duluth for their partnership in granting permission to collect from designated locations within the city.
ANPE would also like to thank UMD for their continued partnership with this event. Thank you to Hawk Ridge Nature Reserve for allowing ANPE to host at their beautiful location.
To learn more about the guidelines around plant collection, check our Resources Page as we upload (soon to come!) a Plant Collection Document that will share collection and pressing tips.
Arrowhead Native Plant Explorers 