Today was the fourth collecting trip to the Pope-Douglas County landfill. What a beautiful day for collecting! And what diversity! There were many new plants I had not seen, some that have yet to begin flowering. I lament not being able to stay longer and collect more. I’m sure I could add 50 more species. I’ll definitely be back next year and start earlier to get a full species list for the site. For those of you who have missed out on seeing some of the fascinating plants out there, pictures from today’s collecting trip, courtesy of Christine, will be forthcoming. As for the collections (including a nettle that still has my thumb stinging), I made 27 collections, including big bluestem, side-oats gramma, dahlia, onion, honeysuckle, sage, ragweed, goat’s beard, milkweed, sweet clover, golden alexander, and goldenrod. Who knew I’d ever make visiting a landfill a habit?

This is a picture of one of the plants at the landfill where Lecia and I are collecting plants. We didn’t collect this one (which I think is Delphinium carolinianum subsp. virescens (Nuttall) R. E. Brooks) because there were only three plants. Luckily Christine was with us to take some really good photos.

So far we have 53 collections from landfill, and there is still more out there that isn’t flowering/fruiting yet. I think that’s a fair number of specimens considering we haven’t spent much time there. The hardest part is waiting for our collections to dry out in the press so that we can identify them.