We have added many species to our inventory this fall! The quantity available varies from species to species, so if you want something in particular, order soon so it doesn’t sell out. Some species have already sold out before they could be added to our inventory because of early-bird customers who contacted us with specific interests. Don’t see something you want on the list? Email us and let us know what you are interested in. We may have really small quantities that don’t make it on the list, or we can collect seed for you next year.
Our updated inventory includes the price per single packet of seeds for each species on the list. If you are interested in larger quantities just email us and let us know.
Klamath-Siskiyou Native Seeds also offers native seed collection services through contract. If you need large quantities of seed for a project, contact us! This works best if we have a few months, at least, before the start of seed collecting time. Low elevation seed collecting can start as early as May, and high elevation seed collecting occurs anytime mid-summer to fall. Land owners who want to encourage biodiversity and native plant conservation on their land find the use of locally wildcrafted, ecoregion-specific seeds benefits the overall quality of their land stewardship goals.
Fall and early winter is the perfect time to plant many native seeds. Some annual species, like bluehead gilia (Gilia capitata), need to germinate with fall rain. They will overwinter as a small seedling in order to put all their energy into flowering next summer. Many perennial species need exposure to the cool, moist temperatures of winter in order to break the dormancy of the seed and germinate in the spring.
Happy native seed planting! -Klamath-Siskiyou Native Seeds
Scarlet monkeyflower — Mimulus (Erythranthe) cardinalis — flowering in early September along a seasonal gulch in the Scott River Canyon in northern California.
With the fall equinox approaching on September 22nd there are some late-season beauties still in bloom, and many native plant seeds to pick! Fall is the busiest time of year for us at Klamath-Siskiyou Native Seeds, as we work hard to collect seed inventory for the coming year and finish up seed collecting contracts before the season ends.
We will have many new additions to our seed inventory this year, but with the busy seed collecting time upon us, we may not have time to fully update our inventory until October. If you know what you want now, let us know and we can reserve seed for you while you wait for all the seeds to be harvested, dried and cleaned.
Picking Ageratina occidentalis seed along a rocky, seasonal stream. This plant has many common names, including: Western boneset, Western eupatorium, and Western joepiweed.Western boneset (Ageratina occidentalis) blooming in late August in the Siskiyou Mountains
Klamath-Siskiyou Native Seeds will have a booth at theTalent Harvest Festival on October 1st. We will have native seed packets and potted native plants for sale, including late-blooming native asters.
Coming up in November we will be giving a talk about creating pollinator habitat with native plants at the Master Gardener’s Winter Dreams, Summer Gardens Symposium. We will post details for this event when they are finalized.
Until then, enjoy the last flowers of summer and the cool transition into fall.
-Klamath-Siskiyou Native Seeds
Red beardtongue (Keckiella corymbosa) flowering in early September along lower Canyon Creek near the Trinity Alps Wilderness.
Tachinid fly on rubber rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa) blooming in September. Because it blooms so late, rabbitbrush is considered the most important native nectar plant for western monarch butterflies on their southward migration. It provides important fuel for the monarch’s long journey to overwintering sites along the California coast.
Klamath-Siskiyou native plants have coevolved alongside its native bees, creating a mutualism we should protect and support through land conservation and land stewardship. Native plants provide native bees with more nutritious food and better overall habitat than highly bred cultivated plants do.
Did you know that we have native coneflowers in the Klamath-Siskiyou? Most people are familiar with the midwestern prairie coneflower: Echinacea. Echinacea is a great medicinal plant that pollinators love in the backyard garden setting; however, it is our native coneflowers that provide the best habitat for pollinators along local mountain streams and in intact mountain meadows.
Coneflowers are part of the sunflower family!
Western coneflower (Rudbeckia occidentalis) is a common plant in moist high elevation meadows in the Klamath-Siskiyou. This species is well-loved by native bees despite the lack of ray flowers (petals). It may be less showy to the human eye, but to native bees it is a forager’s paradise!
Western coneflower (Rudbeckia occidentalis) in a moist meadow on Mt. Ashland.
Our native Rudbeckias are related to black eyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta), a native to Eastern and Central North America and a commonly cultivated plant in the horticultural nursery industry.
Waxy coneflower (Rudbeckia glaucescens) is found in wetlands in the western half of the Klamath-Siskiyou — from the Kalmiopsis Wilderness in Oregon, to northern California’s Smith River.
Waxy coneflower (Rudbeckia glaucescens) at Little Vulcan Lake in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness.
California coneflower (Rudbeckia californica) grows in moist locations in the Klamath Mountains in northwestern California, down through the eastern Sierras. This species is not recognized as occurring in Oregon by the Oregon Flora Project, but it occurs just over the border in California. (I don’t have a photo for this species)
Bigelow’s sneezeweed (Helenium bigelovii) brightens up meadows with its cheery yellow flowers. Native bees and butterflies are often found foraging and nectaring on sneezeweed flowers. The name sneezeweed comes from an historic use of the dried flowers and leaves as a snuff — not because the flower is an allergen!
Bigelow’s sneezeweed (Helenium bigelovii) in the Red Buttes Wilderness.Bigelow’s sneezeweed (Helenium bigelovii)
Native coneflowers make excellent native plant additions to your pollinator garden. The late-season blooms will provide much needed nectar and pollen as other native flowers start to wane. Forget all the highly manipulated, latest, gimmicky echinacea cultivars in the garden catalogs, and plant native coneflowers for the benefit of native bees and other pollinators! You may even be visited by a male bumble bee sleeping underneath a coneflower in your garden at night like pictured below! 🙂
Male black-tailed bumble bee (Bombus melanopygus) sleeping underneath a sneezeweed flower in our garden.
Picking beargrass (Xerophyllum tenax) seed in the Siskiyou Mountains.
Right now is crunch time for seed collecting in the Klamath-Siskiyou. Late blooming, low elevation plants are setting seed as collecting in the low country winds down. Mid-elevation plant seeds are ripening up in abundance as the summer heat sets in. Early flowering, high elevation plants are beginning to set seed as well, beginning the high elevation seed collecting season which lasts until October. We have been out in the field as much as we can collecting native plant seeds for fall and winter planting.
While Klamath-Siskiyou Native Seeds collects a wide variety of native plant seeds that we feel will be of interest for retail sales, we also offer contract seed collecting services. This service gives landowners, gardeners, nurseries, and botanical gardens the peace of mind that the specific species they need will be collected in a specified quantity. Rates for seed collection services vary, so email us today with your project needs: klamathsiskiyou@gmail.com
High elevation wildflower season is at its peak. Take a hike in the mountains to beat the summer heat and get out and experience the high elevation wildflowers in bloom while you can!
Happy Botanizing!
Beargrass (Xerophyllum tenax)
Suzie Savoie from Klamath-Siskiyou Native Seeds will be giving a free presentation at Wild Wines in the Little Applegate Valley on Wednesday, July 20th at 7pm.
This Wildflower Show in Ashland features over 300 species of native flowers from the volcanic Cascades, the much older Siskiyous, and the valleys in between. Free admission. Location: Ashland Community Center, 59 Winburn Way (across from Lithia Park in Ashland). Coordinated by the Siskiyou Chapter, Native Plant Society of Oregon (NPSO). Come meet some of our beautiful mountain flowers!
I helped collect wildflowers for the show today, and helped with the setup at the community center. It’s going to be a great show with lots of amazing flowers from throughout southern Oregon. Check it out! -Suzie
SFI’s Native Bees of the Siskiyous class netting native bees for observation at Page Mountain. We found different species of bees on flowering plants such as snowbrush (Ceanothus velutinus) and whipplevine (Whipplea modesta).
Have you ever wanted to learn more about native bees and native plant pollination? I highly recommend taking Siskiyou Field Institute’s (SFI) Native Bees of the Siskiyous course, taught by native bee expert, Robbin Thorp. Last weekend I attended this course and was really glad I did. SFI’s field courses are always so good. Being a lover of native plants and natural ecosystems, it’s only natural to want to understand as much as possible about the native pollinators these plants depend on for their reproduction, and vice versa — the mutualism between bees and flowering plants is fascinating!
World-renowned native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, UC Davis emeritus professor of entomology, was the recipient of the 2015 UC Davis Distinguished Emeritus Award for his outstanding scholarly work and service accomplished since his retirement in 1994. He is the co-author of Bumble Bees of California: An Identification Guide (2014, Princeton University Press) and California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (2014, Heyday Books).
The Siskiyou Field Institute is an amazing resource for getting in-depth, field-based knowledge about the amazing Klamath-Siskiyou Ecoregion. Check out their courses!
Below are some photos from the course:
Course instructor, Robbin Thorp holding and observing a male Fernald cuckoo bumble bee (Bombus flavidus). Cuckoo bumble bees are social parasites. Females infiltrate a host colony, kill the queen and usurp the nest in order to have the host colonies’ workers feed her and her young. Native bee nesting and reproduction strategies are complex. Robbin Thorp holding a male Fernald cuckoo bumble bee (Bombus flavidus). Because male bumble bees do not have a stinger you can gently hold one to feel it “buzz!” Vosnesensky bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) queen foraging on pussy paws (Calyptridium umbellatum) on serpentine soil along the road to Bolan Lake.Vosnesensky bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) queen in a vial for observation in the field. She was collected on June 11th and was estimated to be about a month old. She will be inseminated by a male, fatten up, and soon go into a hibernation that will last until early spring. This queen was larger than any other bee we collected during the class. She was a beauty!Bees are hard to ID when they are flying around and foraging. Using vials is a good way to temporarily get a good look at them. We collected three different black tail bumble bees (Bombus melanopygus) in vials for observation. Males and females have different characteristics, and in the Klamath-Siskiyou this species has two different color patterns: red form and black form. These different characteristics and color patterns within a single species can make bumble bee ID difficult.Bee specimens collected for this same course at SFI’s Deer Creek Center in 2015. The bees are grouped according to species.Robbin Thorp’s collection of the rare western bumble bee (Bombus occidentalis) and the possibly extinct Franklin’s bumble bee (Bombus franklinii). Note the size variations between queens, males and females. The queens are the largest.
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Bumble bees blowing in an evening breeze on mule’s ears (Wyethia angustifolia).
Male bumble bees do not have pollen baskets because they don’t help provision the nest as female queens and female worker bees do. Male bumble bees are only responsible for feeding themselves, pollinating flowers as they go. Male bumble bees do not return to the nest at all after the larval stage. Instead, male bumble bees sleep in, on, or under the flowers that they forage on for food. In the early evening, as the sun is beginning to wane and the day cools down, male bumble bees will pick a flower to sleep on, then they will forage on the flower until dark, positioning themselves in a protected place for the night.
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Bumble bees on mule’s ears (Wyethia angustifolia) in the early morning, after spending the night on and underneath the flower, before beginning their day of pollination services for many native plants.
When morning comes and the temperature is still cool, male bumble bees can immediately drink nectar to increase their metabolism and warm up before the sun comes out and they begin foraging.
Mule’s ears is a widespread plant in the Klamath-Siskiyou. It is flowering now in many plant communities, including ponderosa pine forest, foothill woodland, chaparral, and valley grassland. You will often find a diversity of pollinator species enjoying the floral resources that mule’s ears provides.
We have added many species to our inventory this fall! The quantity available varies from species to species, so if you want something in particular, order soon so it doesn’t sell out. Some species have already sold out before they could be added to our inventory because of early-bird customers who contacted us with specific interests. Don’t see something you want on the list? Email us and let us know what you are interested in. We may have really small quantities that don’t make it on the list, or we can collect seed for you next year.
Our updated inventory includes the price per single packet of seeds for each species on the list. If you are interested in larger quantities just email us and let us know.
