Late Summer Flowers - Radiant Gentians

As the day length contracts, and the mountain flowers go to seed, gentian flowers bring a jolt of vibrancy and beauty to drying tawny meadows in late summer. In our region, the petals range from otherworldly azure to blue purple but can also be red and white in other regions of the world. The most common local mountain gentian in our region is explorer’s gentian (Gentiana calycosa) which has a beautiful green window in the floral tube below the five petal lobes. A great place to see it, is along the Pacific Crest Trail at Big Red Mountain on the Siskiyou Crest, where the flowers are nestled within tufts of green beargrass leaves.

Two other local gentians are globally rare and are only found in the Klamath-Siskiyous in Oregon and California. Near Oregon Caves and Grayback Mountain in Oregon, Klamath gentian (Gentiana plurisetosa) lives in a handful of mountain basins. The petals have gorgeous long purple threads or bristles, difficult for insects to navigate, but athletic bumble bees are regular visitors. And in the Illinois Valley and the Smith River Watershed, living with cobraliles and western toads, the spectacular Waldo gentian (Gentiana setigera) blooms under September skies in fens, including at Eight Dollar Mountain.

Worldwide, gentians are important in traditional medicine and for brewing bitters. These late season flowers are more than gorgeous farewells to summer, they also provide essential pollen and nectar for pollinators. Poets like Emily Dickison, Bryant, and Ralph Waldo Emerson incorporated gentians into their prose, but dare we say, none of their work compares to quietly sitting next to a patch of gentians in September. 

Controlled Burn at Rogue River Preserve to Reduce Fire Risk and Benefit Native Grassland Species – POSTPONED until Fall 2024 or Spring 2025

Southern Oregon Land Conservancy (SOLC) in consultation with expert fire managers from Grayback Forestry, Inc. and Oregon Department of Forestry have made the decision to call off the 35-acre prescribed fire planned to reduce fire risk and benefit native grassland species at the Rogue River Preserve, 646 Rogue River Dr., Eagle Point, OR.

The controlled burn was expected to take place between June 26 – July 2 with secured burn permits from state fire and smoke management agencies depending on weather, moisture levels, and wind conditions.

Grayback Forestry, Inc., planned to conduct the burn with their professional, experienced crew with resources on hand that would have far exceeded standards required for acceptable burn conditions and following National Wildfire Coordinating Group guidelines.

The fire was postponed for the season due to an increase in fire risk combined with resources being deployed to deal with early season regional wildfires in other locations.

Ecological burns like this one have proven successful in restoring and maintaining native vernal-pool mounded prairie grasslands. Controlled burns during safe weather conditions with experienced fire crews improve public safety by removing dried vegetation that poses a risk for unplanned wildfire ignition later in the summer.

In contrast to wildfires, controlled burns can be run during conditions which allow fire practitioners to meet Oregon air quality standards for ventilation, minimizing smoke impacts to neighbors and the Rogue Valley community and reducing future wildfire risk.

SOLC and Grayback Forestry plan to reschedule the controlled burn when weather conditions are safe, resources are available, and permits have been secured, likely in fall 2024 or spring/ early summer 2025.

Southern Oregon Land Conservancy Grayback Forestry, Inc

541.482.3069 541.830.3100
info@landconserve.org

They Put the Pomp in Pompadour: Pompadour Bluff’s Elusive Animals Identified

By Emily Heller, SOU Student

December 5, 2023

The Harry & Marilyn Fisher Preserve at Pompadour Bluff is a beautiful landmark towering over the City of Ashland. Primarily made of Eocene-age sedimentary rocks, the bluff is a unique and rare feature of the Rogue Valley. The cliffs and small caves serve as excellent wildlife habitat. There are also many distinct vegetation communities concentrated around the bluff, including native grasslands, that can promote a lot of diversity in animal communities.

It has been 43 years since a team of Southern Oregon University researchers studied the unique pinyon mouse (Peromycus truei) at Pompadour Bluff. Since no studies on the mouse population have been conducted since then, there has been a lot of uncertainty around whether or not pinyon mice still persist there. This uncertainty is what sparked Dr. Karen Mager and her Southern Oregon University mammalogy class of 15 students to initiate the first small mammal population research study at Pompadour Bluff since 1980.

On November 7th, 2023, the research team baited Sherman live traps with some tasty treats (sunflower seeds and freshly sliced apples) and fluffy, white nesting material that an animal could use to bundle up. They placed the Sherman traps across three different habitats: grassland, chaparral, and oak woodland. They also placed traps on top of the bluff around the rocks.

Sherman Traps humanely capture living small mammals for research

On November 8th and 9th, the researchers returned to Pompadour to see if there were any animals who took the bait.

As a part of the team in the study, I was so excited to get the opportunity to see the animals we found up close. We would walk up to each Sherman trap to see if any animal was inside. If the door to the trap was closed, it meant that there was potential that an animal was present (sometimes the doors would close on their own). If the door of the trap was closed, and if it was actually moving, you had yourself a winner. If the door was closed and it had some weight to it once you picked up the trap, chances were, there was an animal bound to be inside.

I felt a rush of excitement when I picked up a closed trap in the rocky outcroppings that surely had a small mammal inside. That was when I called the rest of the team over to take a look. Next, Dr. Mager handled the trap while one of us placed a Ziploc bag underneath. We waited with much anticipation for a few seconds until…

A small, white-bellied individual with a honey-brown back and noticeably large ears delicately descended into the bag.

Pinyon mice are more common in the Basin & Range

We identified the animal as a female pinyon mouse. She was healthy and weighed about 36 grams. We took her out of the bag and carefully swabbed her mouth (the swab would later be used in a genetic test). I was surprised to see how calm she was during the whole process. After we were done studying her, we released her back into her respective habitat.

Students collected genetic info

The next animal we found was even more surprising.

The next trap was much heavier than the female pinyon mouse’s trap. There were several whispers from the team, asking, what could be in there?

After doing the same Ziploc bag procedure as before, we were all gasped when we saw a giant dark gray, brown, and white creature with small ears and long black whiskers appear in the bag.

Dusky-footed wood rat

We identified the animal to be a dusky-footed woodrat (Neotoma fuscipes). The animal was too big to weigh with the resources we brought. It weighed over 100 grams. We thought it was humorous how the woodrat fit just perfectly into the trap. The animal ate all of the bait food and was probably pretty content.

Dusky-footed woodrats are pretty interesting rodents. They build nests made out of sticks. Nearby the Sherman trap where we caught our dusky-footed woodrat, we found a nest that may have belonged to the one that we caught.

One researcher on the team, Kelsey, mentioned that she saw a lot of signs on the rocky cliffs that woodrats had lived there. While we saw stick nests belonging to dusky-footed woodrats, there was another sign that we noticed. A relative to the dusky-footed woodrat we caught, bushy-tailed woodrats (Neotoma cinerea) have highly acidic urine that stains rocks. They do this to mark their territory. Even though we didn’t catch a bushy-tailed woodrat in our study, we were certain that they were around due to the signs of them we saw in the rocks.

We also noticed that the dusky-footed woodrat had a large parasite on its neck. A couple other animals that the team had caught in the study were found to have had parasites on them, too.

In total, we captured five pinyon mice in the study (3 of which were female, with the mean weight being about 32.2 grams). We also captured one female California vole (Microtus californicus) that weighed about 45 grams.

It was such a great opportunity to visit Pompadour Bluff and find that pinyon mice were still present in the area. A member of the research team, Fiona, expressed that she was grateful to have discovered that the pinyon mouse population seemed to be healthy and stable. We learned that most of the small animals thrived on top of the bluff in the rock outcrops.

Pompadour Bluff is not only a scenic part of the Rogue Valley, but also a habitat teeming with thriving populations of small critters, from tiny pinyon mice to large dusky-footed woodrats.

I would like to thank Dr. Karen Mager, Dr. Michael Parker, the Southern Oregon Land Conservancy, and the research teams of both 1980 and 2023.

Open Lands "Fae"

Join us for a very special spooky Open Lands Day! The Rogue River Preserve includes a floodplain forest, oak woodlands with meadows, and is only open to the public for special events. You are welcome to explore the trails at your own pace, attend one of our guided hikes, bring a picnic lunch to enjoy, or do all three. We’re offering three hikes themed around our more cryptic organisms. Registration is required, costumes are encouraged. Please only sign up for one themed hike.

Self-guided: 10:00 – 3:00. Explore the Preserve at your own pace.

Lichen Hike: 10:30 – 12:00. Discover the cryptic lichens that live on trees, rocks, and soil with lichenologist Steve Sheehy. Learn how to identify some of the 57 liches described so far on the Preserve.

Cryptozoology Hike ‘Sassy with Sasquatch’: 12:00 – 1:00. Bigfoot, Yeti, Sasquatch, let’s go for a walk to the Fairy Forest and discuss the elusive Pacific Northwest creature. Guided by SOLC staff member Rebekah.

Cryptozoology Hike ‘Ness Around and Find Out’: 1:30 – 2:30. Learn about the monster of Loch Ness while we walk around the vernal pool-mounded prairies; perhaps we’ll spot a distant cousin. Guided by SOLC staff member Rebekah.