Abstracts

Utah Rare Plant Meeting

hosted by the Utah Native Plant Society

March 5, 2024

Online Meeting via Zoom; See agenda here

(in alphabetical order by last name of presenter)

Thomas Meinzen , Project Eleven Hundred, Portland, Oregon. thomasmeinzen@gmail.com

Pollinator Dependency of a Rare Alpine Plant, Senecio fremontii var. inexpectatus, in the La Sal Mountains, Utah.

Senecio fremontii var. inexpectatus (SEFRI) is a rare perennial herb in the Asteraceae family endemic to the La Sal Mountains of southeastern Utah. This plant and its habitat are endangered by climate change and introduced mountain goats, which pose a novel and escalating threat to the alpine ecosystem where SEFRI grows. Pollinators may represent a key aspect of SEFRI’s persistence as a patchy metapopulation in this challenging environment, yet this relationship is poorly understood. In this study, we provide evidence that insect pollination substantially boosts the production of fertile SEFRI seeds by more than threefold, and that plants without insect pollination are able to produce low numbers of fertile seeds, presumably through self-fertilization. We also share observations of up to 59 insect morphospecies visiting SEFRI, and of low levels of direct grazing on the plants. These results offer compelling support for the importance of alpine pollinators, including bumblebees, in the conservation of this endemic plant, and for SEFRI’s significance as a keystone species for a unique alpine pollinator community.

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Cindy Newlander, Denver Botanic Gardens, Denver, Colorado, newlandc@botanicgardens.org , Jennifer Ackerfield (Denver Botanic Gardens), Brooke Palmer (Denver Botanic Gardens), Alexandra Seglias (Denver Botanic Gardens), Ross McCauley (Fort Lewis College), Tim Thibault (The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens), and Marc Coles-Ritchie (Bureau of Land Management)

Scouting and Collecting Quercus welshii for use in ex situ collections.

In 2022 and 2023, Denver Botanic Gardens secured funding from an American Public Gardens Association – U.S. Forest Service Tree Gene Conservation Partnership Grant for fieldwork in Utah and Arizona on Quercus welshii R.A.Denham (syn: Q. havardii Rydb. var. tuckeri S.L.Welsh). Scouting and collecting trips were conducted both years, re-visiting previously identified collecting sites in both years and attempting to find additional sites in 2023. Herbarium vouchers and acorns were collected. The collections were shared with other botanical gardens and are also in propagation in Denver Botanic Gardens’ greenhouse.

During this talk, Cindy Newlander will discuss the prior status of Q. welshii in ex situ collections, show images of the unique habitat in which this species grows, and talk about the current ex situ efforts for this species, including an update on the germination of acorns collected in 2023.

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