Portland NPSO Wildflower Appreciation Month, May 2021 BioBlitz!'s Journal

Hello all you wildflower admirers, Thanks for participating in our first every Wildflower BioBlitz. Take some time to go through the Stats. What did people see the most, the favorites, and the least expected.

Since we have restricted the observations to Research Grade, please help us finish the identifications that others have submitted. If you are unsure skip it; If it is an easy one, but boring, please go ahead and confirm their observation and identification.

Also if you have suggestions for next year’s Portland Native Plant Society of Oregon’s Bio Blitz, please let us know.

You can find out more about our monthly hikes and how to join NPSO at https://portlandnativeplants.org/

Thank you for enjoying and protecting the beauty of our Earth.

Well another week of beautiful weather has taken people out to explore the beauty of the Northern Oregon and Southern Washington. We are making slight adjustments to our boundaries in order to capture the plants that our near our NPSO guided hikes. Our observations of native wildflowers are adding up. Thank you to those who have officially joined the project.

So now challenge yourself to look more locally for native plants. There are many local places to visit and NPSO are still hosting several hikes to enjoy after work. Look for them on Meet Up.

Challenge yourself to go to some of our local nurseries that specialize in native plants and grow your own. Camas has been one of the top observations, and they are available at many nurseries. Ask yourself, which plant communities do I enjoy and start a patch in your yard.

Hello Wildflower Appreciators,

I hope that you have been enjoying this fine weather, and maybe even joining the Native Plant Society for an amazing hike. Note: The Dalles/Bretz Flood Ecoregion has been added to our map since many of our hikes have been out that way. Please continue to add your observations regardless.

On another note, we decided to redo the filters and to limit the observations to native plants, because that is who we as NPSO are. Sure we want to monitor introduced species and even invasive ones, but we want our data set to reflect just the natives at this point. Introduced plants can be search for by species under the regular iNaturalist megadata base.

Please get your friends to join us in documenting the blossoming of wildflowers in May. Who knows what next year will bring.

How exciting to see all of the observations over the weekend and throughout our boundaries. It is definitely May and camas season. NPSO members are truly dedicated to stewarding the basalt vernal pools and other moist meadowland habitats in which the camas and their community plants thrive. Thanks for showing us other areas to monitor. If you are interested in finding more beautiful places to visit, consider joining the Native Plant Society of Oregon (NPSO). Details at www.portlandnativeplants.org.

Now that we have had at least some rain, are you ready to see what is blooming? Head out and enjoy Spring wildflowers. We chose to not limit the flowering plants to only natives, but try and focus on those populations. We do want to know if there are different invasive plants that have moved in due to our flip flopped Winter and Spring, so go ahead and track your observations of unusual sightings. Most of all enjoy the rainbow of colors our mild weather has brought us.

As National Native Plant Month continues Nationally, we look forward to continuing the focus on native plants by enjoying and identifying the flowering plants, including those beautiful maples, that are in abundance during May, with our NPSO Wildflower Appreciation Month Bio Blast. This year, due to sunshine rather than showers in April, many are ahead of schedule. Make sure that you have set your iNaturalist projects to capture all that you do and view. Let us know what you find that is remarkable.

Thank you for joining our effort to track the phenology of wildflowers in the Portland Vancouver area. With all of the beautiful flowers that are already out in April it is hard to wait to open the project. Keep watching, we may decide to open it a week early.