Week 2

Week 2!

This week Seth and I went out into the field to Macrae farm in Colchester. There we collected Speckled Alder seeds, not to be confused with Alnus glutinosa or European Black Alder. Speckled Alder keeps its seed in its catkins, they look like little pine cones. When we got the Macrae site we walked around and collected these seeds from as many of the trees as we could. At first when we got there we thought it was bust because we didn't see any Alders, but once one popped up, they all popped up and we were set. I became a professional branch bender, allowing Seth to reach the seeds that were farther up. By the end of our time there we had two gallon sized bags full of catkins and seeds.

On our ride to the Macrae site, we talked about this cool thing that was happening with Butternut trees. With most trees you can pick seeds from anywhere in Vermont and they will adapt to the site. With Butternuts, since there is blight, they catalog them and look at the locally adapted species to see about the blight resistant trees. They then collect those seeds catalog them very well, and then plant them. This is very long term study, but they want to see if these trees are actually blight resistant, or whether that it was a happy accident that they were. All and all it is a really cool long term experiment.

-Rachel