Internship at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden Katherine Moses Roland

Herbarium

Nursery

Berberis nevinii

Bighorn Mountain Wilderness

Rock Creek Lake

Seed House

RSABG has been monitoring the Bighorn Mountain Wilderness in partnership with the National Forest Service to determine the quality of stewardship. In addition to documenting the flora, we recorded new populations of both invasive and rare plants.

I assisted with many parts of this project, primarily collecting and pressing specimen. I also completed reporting forms for the NSF, conducted vegetative transects, and collected seeds from both common and rare plant species.

Acknowledgements

Approximately one day a week, I worked in the RSABG Native Plant Nursery. This horticultural department produces native plants for sale, as well as specimen of for the garden’s living collection.

I assisted with propagation, both by taking cuttings and planting seeds. I frequently planted up seedlings to larger pots, and watered large sections of the nursery. I also aided in collecting plants and seeds for propagation from the garden.

The seed house houses the RSABG seed collection, in an attempt to collect seeds from every Californian native plant. I assisted in processing Erythranthe shevockii and Berberis nevinii seed. This included cleaning, drying, counting, weighing, packaging, and freezing.

One day a week, I assisted in the herbarium. I worked on mounting specimen collected at RSABG and elsewhere, sorted and repackaged the seed collection to be accessioned, and packed loans and gifts. I helped pull and scan specimen collected by Marcus E. Jones in Mexico. I also participated in a biyearly check for insects.

area. We camped there for seven days, and spent the days hiking, collecting plant specimen, and taking pictures of rare plants.

I accompanied Joy England, a Masters student at RSABG and Claremont College, to Rock Creek Lake in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. For her Masters project, Joy is completing a flora of the Rock Creek Lake

Berberis nevinii, or Nevin’s Barberry, is a native California shrub. With only two sizable populations left, it is quite endangered. One of these populations has been monitored previously and was introduced originally. Researchers at RSABG are just starting a project to assess the conservation needs of this species.

I assisted in this project by choosing and collecting specimen in the garden, writing up protocol and data sheets for continued

I would like to thank the Brown Foundation for their generous support. I would also like to thank Naomi Fraga for her mentorship and help throughout; Joy England, Erika Gardner, Duncan Bell, Sarah De Groot, Mare Nazaire, Antonio Sanchez, and Loraine Washburn for their support and instruction, and all the other RSABG interns who made my internship so enjoyable.

monitoring of the introduced population, and helped execute that monitoring.

Rancho Santa Ana The Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden

(RSABG) in Claremont, CA, is a native plant garden, focusing primarily on California Floristic Province natives. I interned at RSABG, performing a wide variety of tasks.