DON’T YOU LOVE it when you have a mountain of work to get done on alpines? Doesn’t everybody in the rock garden community feel this way? We love it even more when we work on a project for years, then suddenly and luckily meet people doing the same thing, and a group project is born! Nick Courtens and Colin Lee of Betty Ford Alpine Gardens in Vail, Colorado, had this very experience one cold May morning in 2018 when Amy Schneider from Denver Botanic Gardens showed up, just as they were busy building their new Silk Road garden. It was the first day we all met to start a collaborative gardens project for alpine species documentation. We went on to do field work in the Colorado alpine together and continue making contributions to both the Global Genome Initiative and the North American Botanic Garden Strategy for Alpine Plant Conservation to this day. Little did we realize how our separate projects would start coming together that morning, and how years of collaboration were about to begin
It all started with the former director of the Denver Botanic Gardens (DBG) Kathryn Kalmbach Herbarium, Dr. Melissa Islam. Melissa first taught Amy how to create alpine plant herbarium collections for species occurrence documentation and seed collection on Mount Evans in 2010. Melissa spent time discussing the qualities that make a valuable alpine herbarium specimen with Amy, instilling a philosophy of collecting to create preserved “moments in time.” These have been and will be used in the future for research on topics, such as plant phenology, genetics, climate change, and more. Amy collected over the years with different DBG interns, seasonal employees, and volunteers.
Meanwhile, the Betty Ford team had been working in collaboration with the Bureau of Land Management to monitor, collect small amounts of seed from, and propagate wild populations of Penstemon debilis. This imperiled species grows in a remote area of the Roan Plateau on steep oil shale cliffs and is under threat from natural gas production and development. Betty Ford has been able to grow several flats of P. debilis for their collections and distribute these plants to other regional botanic gardens to conserve this threatened species.
A few years later, all DBG field collectors were expected to make an additional leaf tissue collection for each specimen they vouchered. The preserved leaves would become part of the data collection done for the Global Genome Initiative (GGI). The leaf tissue collections would be used for DNA extraction, available to researchers all over the world. Another branch of the GGI project takes place at various botanic gardens, where curated ex-situ species and leaf tissue are collected. DBG had already begun participating and interns were supervised in collecting for the GGI Gardens Project at the York Street campus.
Melissa talked with Amy about doing this project at another botanic garden in Colorado. Amy decided on Betty Ford Alpine Gardens in Vail, mainly because they have a huge number of curated alpine plants from around the world and Amy adores alpines. Nick gave Amy permission to start collecting from their garden for the GGI Gardens Project, and we have been working together on this project ever since.
GGI Gardens Project
The three of us gather several times throughout each season at Betty Ford Alpine Gardens to collect herbarium vouchers and leaf samples, documenting the curated alpines making up their beautiful garden displays. The leaf sample specimen is taken from each voucher for the GGI Gardens Project. We work with Betty Ford’s horticulture interns each summer to practice making scientifically valuable and useful collections and learning how these are preserved for future use by the research community. This hands-on experience for interns also teaches them about the diverse collection of plants that grow at 8,200 feet (2,500 m) above sea level. Interns assist with inventory checks, label needs, plant conditions, and photographs for the plant database and SEINet. Sometimes a label goes missing, and although Nick and Colin know which species it is, they challenge the interns to ID and key the plant out for homework.
Field Days in the Alpine
After working together in the garden at Betty Ford and learning how much fun we have together, we decided to join forces as often as possible. We began to meet a few times each summer to work in the field, exploring our beautiful backyard, the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Our exciting and danger-filled adventures commenced.
There is no doubt that if you asked us what our favorite part of summer is, it would be doing field work. Getting away from the hustle and bustle of Denver or Vail connects us to the reasons we love alpine plants. The time we spend collecting together is almost always the most productive and thought-provoking time, sharing and discussing all things plant or gardening related. Seeing plants grow in-situ helps us to grow them ex-situ, which may help to conserve rare or threatened plants in the future.
We hike together at different field sites throughout the Colorado alpine, botanizing and taking field data on which alpine species we find for future seed collection as part of our work with the Alpine Strategy. Typically, we go on at least eight to ten trips throughout the season. In the past few years, the number of successful seed collecting trips was limited due to extreme drought conditions and the difficulties of navigating COVID-19 protocols.
We have learned that friends who don’t share this passion may find it to be pretty boring. We hike slowly and stop every ten feet to crawl around on the ground. Nick’s puppy, Asa Gray, is also a regular on hikes and is often photographed more than the plants themselves (the guilty party here is Amy).
The extreme conditions can make field work challenging in the alpine. Being prepared with a backpack full of gear such as layers, rain jackets, gloves, Snickers bars, and a big bag of peanut M&Ms is essential for the intense sun, high winds, and unpredictable weather. We have managed to survive some alarming and crazy weather events such as freak snowstorms, close lightning strikes, and poor air quality from wildfires. There have been times we had to huddle under whatever shelter we can find from willows or rocks and wait it out (rule for bad Colorado weather? Wait 15 minutes). Sometimes we remind each other that we will be okay because humans have been in the alpine for at least the past 7,000 years. After each successful day, we like to celebrate with ice cream or a cold beverage and no one goes home without a smile on their face and maybe some windburn.
The final collaborative efforts each season are our alpine seed collection hikes each autumn. Seed is used for propagation and added to the living collections at the DBG alpine site Mount Goliath and Betty Ford Alpine Gardens. All of this collection information becomes accessible to anyone in the world for years to come. Since 2018, approximately 600 different species have been added to the DBG Kathryn Kalmbach Herbarium and biorepository from this partnership, with all data and imaged collections eventually becoming available through GGI and SEINet. The living collections at Mt. Goliath and Betty Ford Alpine Gardens have become two venerated high-elevation repositories of alpine biodiversity and ex-situ conservation efforts.
