Do you know your lemmas from your glumes?
NMFWRI and NMDGF staff and student interns spent three days in a botany and grass workshop hosted in Las Vegas, NM this August as part of our FIRENM initiative. Under guidance of instructor Lauren Bansbach, the team got a refresher on botanical principles and terminology, then dove deep into the realm of grasses, under the microscope and in the field. Professional development opportunities like these are critical to quality field data collection and other efforts at NMFWRI. It was also clear that the staff participating love their work, as more than one said that dissecting tiny plant parts under the scope while poring over thousands of pages of dichotomous keys “felt like a vacation.”
FIRENM is Fire Informed Restoration Education for New Mexico, which aims to increase access to fire-adapted restoration knowledge, practices and experiences to promote resiliency in firesheds across the state.
