Excursion 6

Sunday July 10th we went out with the weed crew and nine volunteers to pick Spanish Broom. We managed to remove about two dozen of the offensive plants. The next day we joined the weed crew and split up into groups of three or four and did a series of riparian areas near Moody canyon. We removed Prickly Lettuce, Rabbits Foot, Sweet Clover, and Sow Thistle. Meagan’s group ran into fields of Sisymbrium and Polypogon that were too large to remove so they reported it and kept going. After we had scoured the riparian area for high priority invasive we found some Spanish Broom and removed all the seeds from approximately four eight foot tall plants. On Tuesday we went to a herbarium to study different invasive that could be found in the forest. Katie, our forest contact, had prepared a test for us that required naming more than fifty non-native plants that attack our riparian areas. Earlier in the morning we had also participated in Radio training so that if an emergency occurred in the field we would know how to reach Dispatch on the Weed Crew’s radios. The next day Meagan and David began to work on our final report while Brian and Danny went out into the field with the weed crew and work on more riparian areas.