My First Treasure Hunt; Foxglove

Given that I have been involved with LLELA since winter of 2006, when I went on my very first treasure hunt, this blog isn't going to be chronological.  Rather, past impressions as they seem fit, blended with the super cool from the here and now.

Courtesy Richard Freiheit

So, first impression; hunting the surprisingly not-so-elusive foxglove (Penstemon cobaea) seed  on a cool day, when everything seemed dead to the world.  My mood matched the grayness of the weather, so my brother Richard decided I needed to get outdoors, smell some fresh air and feel alive again.  Yeah right.  Whatever.  So we grabbed paper bags and drove to a park we had played in as children.  Okay, what are we doing here?  A little too old and a little too cold for the swings Richard.
  But Richard didn't want to swing.  He walked me into the dry grasses and showed me sticks coming up from the ground with little capsules attached. "Collect these gently, and don't spill the seeds 'till they're in the bag," he said.  Sure enough, each odd shaped pod was full of little correspondingly odd shaped black seeds.  After my first attempt of snapping off a stick, and watching seeds fly everywhere BUT my bag, I knew what he meant.
  A few minutes more of holding THEN snapping sticks, and my bag began to have a nice rattling sound to it.  Before long, there was quite a little pile of blackness at the bottom of my brown bag.  And that was just what had spilled from the yet-to-be-processed pods.  All the while, Richard told me stories of years past when he would pick these flowers, not knowing anything about them other than how pretty they were.  Every year, he would present a bouquet of them to our mother.  This year, we would collect seed for his job as Restoration Manager at LLELA.  As we crunched through what Richard called big bluestem and little bluestem I began to see my growing pile of blackness as a treasure, ignored by people speeding by on the highway next to us.  Blinded by the grayness of the weather and the rush of the holiday season, they failed to see a most beautiful gift right under their noses; tiny specks of life waiting to be planted, waiting to grow, to blossom, and to spread new life as the cold returned once again.  I had found my first treasure, and that's when I got hooked.

Courtesy Richard Freiheit

Penstemon cobaea, or foxglove, has since become a story of  success at LLELA.  Although some stands existed before restoration began, this species can now be found April to May in numerous locations, as it germinates and grows readily, coming back year after year, from those seeds I had collected that depressing winter day in 2006.