The Selection and Increase of
Native Plants for Rehabilitation
of Disturbed Wildlands in the
Great Basin.
Therese Meyer, Jason Vernon,
Scott Walker
Ephraim Seed Warehouse
Ephraim Greenhouse
Challenges:
• How to develop a few selections that
will be suitable for re-vegetation across
a huge range of environmental
conditions?
• How to develop and encourage an
industry of seed producers to satisfy the
seed needs of all the agencies?
Plan of action:
• Collect from a wide distribution of sites and
species
• Test extensively in the greenhouse and lab
• Test extensively in the field in a wide variety
of environmental conditions
• Early release of some unselected lines
to growers to work out the agronomic
kinks and to establish methods and
systems of production
Agronomic questions:
• How much seed to plant per acre? How
deep?
• Direct seed or plugs?
• When to plant? (Does the species require
moist pre-chilling conditions to germinate?)
• Irrigation or dry farm?
• Pesticides?
• Weed control with mechanical or herbicides?
• How to harvest? How many harvests per
season?
• How much seed produced per acre?
• Seed pricing in buy-back?
• Several of these questions can be partly
answered by laboratory and
greenhouse experiments.
• Some can only be answered by actual
field growing of a crop.
Forbs:
•
•
•
•
•
Biscuitroot (Lomatium)
Tapertip hawksbeard (Crepis)
Arrowleaf balsamroot (Balsamorhiza)
Cushion buckwheat (Eriogonum)
Globemallows (Sphaeralcea)
Grasses:
• Needle and thread grass (Stipa comata)
• Great Basin wildrye (Elymus cinereus)
• Bluebunch wheatgrass
(Pseudoroegneria spicata)
• Muttongrass (Poa fendleri)
Seed cleaning: CRAC
Soon to be published:
Collecting and Cleaning Seed
of Intermountain Wildland
Shrubs, Forbs and Grasses
by Richard Stevens, Scott C.Walker,
Jason Vernon, Stanford Young,
and E. Durant McArthur
Information on collecting,
cleaning and handling:
• Shrubs– 59 species
• Forbs– 40 species
• Grasses– 13 species
Germination tests:
EROV Germination: Moist Chill
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
133 days
91 days
55 days
28 days
U3-01 U4-01 U5-01 U6-02 U7-02 U8-02 U9-02 U10- U11- U12- U13- U14- U15- U1602 02 02 02 03
03 03
Accession #
Globemallow germination study
No pretreatment
Three min. boil pretreatment
Lomatium: germination
Physiological studies:
Lomatium (Biscuit root)
Perideridia (Yampah)
30 days moist chill; no true leaves
Perideridia (Yampah)
dormant storage organ
Lomatium simplex (Ternate lomatium)
Only one true leaf
ELCI
productivity
Planting Depth studies: ELCI,
CRAC and SPGR
Field testing: forbs
• Direct seed Wells and Orovada, Nevada,
and Nephi, Utah
• 10 species, >110 accessions, five repeat
blocks per accession
HEGE 1000 precision seeder
Transplant plugs
• Plants from greenhouse to Fountain
Green and Ephraim spring of 2005
• Deer exclosure fence planned to
enclose ~ 25 acres of the Fountain
Green WMA to protect experimental
plantings from depredation
Plug production:
Grower early release
program:
• 2003: Sphaeralcea seed to Utah
growers
• 2004: BASA and CRAC to growers in
northern Utah, EROV and CLLU to
Nevada growers for increase
Native Seed for Restoration
2003-2004
• ~50 native species in warehouse: shrubs,
grasses, forbs
• 28 native plant species out for bid
• 14 purchased native plant species
• 15 Growers/Collectors
• 52,200 pounds of native seed used
• ~25,000 acres of ground treated statewide
600,000 lb.capacity
Pricing: Wild Collected
•Balsamorhiza
sagittata –
Balsamroot
Wildland Collected Seed
•Cleome serrulata –
Rocky Mtn. Beeplant
$140.00
•Penstemon
cyananthus –
Wasatch
$120.00
•Penstemon palmerii
– Palmers
penstemon
Price $/lb. PLS
$100.00
•Sphaeralcea
coccinea-Common
globemallow
$80.00
•Vicia americana –
American vetch
$60.00
•Hedysarum boreale
– Sweetvetch
$40.00
•Astragalus
utahensis – Utah
milkvetch
•Lupinus argenteus –
Silvery lupine
$20.00
$0.00
2000
2001
2002
Year
2003
2004
Sphaeralcea
grossularifoliaGooseberry-leaf
globemallow
Sphaeralcea
munroana-Munroe
globemallow
Eriogonum
Pricing: Field Produced
Agronomically Produced Seed
•Helianthus annuus –
common sunflower
$30.00
•Kochia prostrate
–Immigrant Forage
Kochia
•Linum lewesii – Blue
flax, non certified
$25.00
Price $/lb. PLS
•Achillea millefolium –
Western Yarrow
$20.00
$15.00
•Medicago sativa –
Alfalfa
$10.00
•Melilotus officinaleYellow Sweet Clover
$5.00
•Onobrychis
viciaefolia – Sainfoin
$0.00
2000
2001
2002
Year
2003
2004
•Sanguisorba minor –
Small Burnet (non
Cert)