Little Green Oases
Join guest host M.A. Russell and botanist and Utah Native Plant Society Vice President Parker James Lloyd for a springtime hike through the canyons of Moab as they chat Utah’s native plant biodiversity, marvel at cool botanical adaptations, and visit a hanging garden full of water-loving plants like orchids, monkeyflowers, and the cave-dwelling primrose Primula specuicola.
Parker also describes how iNaturalist supports community science and research, and shares ways to get involved with the Utah Native Plant Society.
Meet the Scientist: Parker Lloyd
Parker Lloyd is a botanist and science educator based in Salt Lake City. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Utah Native Plant Society, where he currently holds the office of Vice President. Having started his conservation journey as a volunteer, Parker is an avid community scientist. On his journeys across the West he is always looking for tiny plants, bees, and ways to excite the public about Utah’s dynamic native ecosystems.
Relevant Links
A few of the plants discussed in this episode:
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Interview Excerpt - Life in the Hanging Gardens
Parker Lloyd is a botanist and science educator based in Salt Lake City. He is also currently the Vice President of the Utah Native Plant Society. Science Moab guest-host M.A. Russell sat down with Parker to talk about the Native Plant Society, and some unique plants found in Southeastern Utah.
Science Moab: Can you tell me a bit about the Utah Native Plant Society?
Parker Lloyd: The Utah Native Plant Society is an organization dedicated to the appreciation, conservation, and responsible use of Utah’s native plants. We are an entirely volunteer run 501c3 non-profit organization, made up of professional biologists, horticulturists, growers, home gardeners, casual nature appreciators, and hardened naturalists.
One of our missions is about appreciating all of the incredible native plants that are here in Utah and there’s over 3000 species of plants native to Utah and realistically that’s closer to 4000. That’s a lot of plants, there’s a lot of things to appreciate. You have tons of incredible endemic plants that can be found just here in Grand County, such as Astragalus sabylosis which is a type of milkvetch that only grows on mancos shale badlands. It’s endemic to Grand County. And like, that’s a rough environment to grow on, and these plants have evolved to just thrive in this one unique environment. In the La Sals, you have the endemic thistles that Dr. Ackerfield spoke to you guys about last year. You have this endemism and these specific environments repeated all over in Grand County and the canyons and everything here. So, you know, all the surrounding areas here have incredible biodiversity, with plants really just being one part of that inventory of life that you have here.
One of those special habitats are the hanging gardens, which are dominated by mesophidic and hydrophidic floral communities. Mesophidic means moisture loving and hydrophidic means water loving, so needing moist areas near water. And so these hanging gardens form in cracks in the canyon walls here, caused by seepages that come from groundwater, that come from snow melt, from runoff. In these hanging gardens, you get these sheltered little islands, if you will, these little green oasis. And all this, all this unique flora can, can just thrive in these rare and fragile ecosystems. So, this stuff you’ll typically find can include, you know, mosses, liverwards, column bines, ferns, but in a lucky few and pretty specific scattered around seepages in southeastern Utah, and northeastern Arizona, you’ll find a Primula specuocola, which is the endemic cave dwelling or alcove dwelling primrose.
Science Moab: Can you describe what Primula specuicola looks like?
Lloyd: So, like the other native primroses in the same sub-genera of primrose, such as Primula parreyi, Primula rusbyi, they have five petals, with purple flowers. Primula specuicola are very fuzzy; they have this dense grayish fuzz all over them called tomentum. That’s an adaptation against extreme UV and extreme heat.
Science Moab: Not related to evening primroses, correct?
Lloyd: Not related to evening primroses, correct. Evening primroses are Onegraceae which is a separate family from Primulaceae.
Science Moab: You lead workshops on using iNaturalist. Can you talk about what this resource is, and how people can use it?
Lloyd: So iNaturalist is a website and app for community science. It’s accessible and available to anyone who wants to learn. So it’s a wonderful resource where you can upload photos of bees, butterflies, flowers, mushrooms, all these incredible organisms. And then it takes the data like what time of year you saw it, what time of day, the location, and it creates this database that has millions of observations around the entire world and then scientists can use all this data. And they would never be able to gather all this information without people out there snapping photos. It’s also a really fun way to just encourage yourself to get out in nature. So it’s a great resource for a lot of different reasons and so when people kind of start to learn about what’s around them, then they connect to it better and then they want to protect it and conserve it.
Science Moab: is there anything else you want to add about like getting involved in either the Utah Native Plant Society or community science?
Lloyd: The Native Plant Society has a very affordable membership that gets you access to our journals, to special meetings, and extra events. The dues help fund our grant and aid program. Last year we were able to fund a whole bunch of incredible projects like a review of Gooseberries and a new book and a community science project looking at endangered primroses up in Logan. It’s a very valuable resource, especially with all of the federal funding changes and everything, like there’s a lot of people who need that extra support. Our grant-in-aid program is meant for students, researchers, organizations,and casual plant enthusiasts – anyone who’s working towards, increasing our knowledge of Native plants here in Utah.
