Wood Poppy: Flowers of Hope

In this episode of the Rarefied podcast, host interview Dr. Jenny McCune, an associate professor at the University of Lethbridge, to discuss her research on rare and endangered plant species in Canada. The focus is on the wood poppy, a bright yellow flower native to the Carolinian forest of Southwestern Ontario. Dr. McCune delves into its characteristics, habitat, genetic distinctions, and the challenges it faces due to habitat loss. She also highlights her lab's efforts in conservation translocations to establish new populations on protected lands, aiming to ensure the species' survival. This episode emphasizes the importance of botanical conservation and the complexities involved in saving endangered plants.

00:00 Introduction to the Rarefied Podcast

00:35 Exploring the Wood Poppy

01:34 Wood Poppy Characteristics and Habitat

04:02 Seed Dispersal and Threats

10:23 Conservation Efforts and Research

12:49 Genetic Studies and Translocation

23:27 Public Awareness and Genetic Concerns

26:49 Debating Translocation Strategies

28:19 Translocation Practices in Different Regions

29:59 Challenges and Successes in Plant Translocation

31:14 Wood Poppy Translocation Success

35:28 Fieldwork and Observations

39:36 Community Involvement and Conservation

44:49 Personal Journey into Botany

48:59 Future of Plant Translocation

51:16 Conclusion and Next Episode Preview 

Transcript

Theme Song 0:00

In every stream, in every tree, a story lives, a legacy. Let's listen close, let's take a stand, to keep the wild across the land. In every stream, in every tree, a story lives, a legacy.

0:24

Well welcome. You've found us, let the adventure begin. This is rarefied podcast, where we're going to learn to love some of our rarest and most imperiled species. Today, we're exploring the forest of Southwestern Ontario in hopes of finding a flower that is like a little Ray of sunshine in the understory of the Carolinian forest. Today, we're joined by Jenny McCune and associate professor in the department of biological studies at the university of Lethbridge. Jenny and her students study plant species that are rare and endangered in Canada. And are currently testing methods for establishing new populations of species at risk plants on protected lands. One of the plants she's hoping to have success with is the blood poppy. So grab your trial and your bothering can, and let's find out what it takes to protect the remaining wild populations of the wood poppy.

Meredith 1:17

So we're gonna chat about wood poppies today, and I'm very excited. You're the first person I'm talking to about a plant. And so what can you tell us about a wood poppy? Like what is a wood poppy? What does it look like? Where does it live? Where can people find it?

jenny 1:34

Yeah, so wood poppy is a beautiful forest understory plant. It's a perennial, which means it lives for multiple years, so it doesn't just grow for one year, produce a seed, and then die. It can live for decades, we think, we're not really sure, but we think like 20 years, maybe it's got this beautiful bright yellow flower, which in Ontario, which is where you can find it in the far south of Ontario. If you're in the right place and you're in the right forest, you could find it blooming, I guess, sort of mid to late May into June sometimes. And it's got four bright yellow petals, even bigger than a tooney, I would say. So they're pretty, they're pretty stunning. And it's got kind of, they're a bit bluey green, sort of dark green leaves that are kind of lobey, kind of like an oak. If you think about an oak leaf, the, the margins are kind of wiggly instead of straight. And if you accidentally break it, it has bright yellow sap. So we, we often get this sap all over us when we're in and around the wood poppy populations.

Meredith 2:42

It sounds beautiful and I guess I never really thought, like, is there a way to tell an age of a plant? I know you can do that with trees, or is it just you go back and you monitor the same populations and you see how many years that plant keeps coming back for?

jenny 2:59

Yeah, it depends on the plant. I know with, with trilliums, they're rhizomes, they're sort of underground parts. You can kind of see kind of layers and almost like a tree ring and estimate how old the trillium is. I don't. I think we can do that with with would poppy. So, yeah, we would have to track it, you know, after we planted a seed and see how long it could live. So, I mean, that's why we don't really know how long they can live

Meredith 3:26

fair enough. I mean, it is cool to think of, like, I think people maybe because of bouquets and things think of flowers is very like. Temporary. So it's nice to, you know, change that mindset and think of them as like, Oh, like, especially if you were to compare it to a wild animal, like 20 years is a pretty long lifespan.

jenny 3:44

Yeah. Yeah, they're around for a while and they, they have these sort of hairy capsules. Their fruit is like shaped like a sort of like an American football. It's got hairs all over it and inside are like usually between 30 and a hundred little black seeds, dark brown or black seeds.

Meredith 4:02

Do a lot of things eat the seeds or how, how do these poppies disperse?

jenny 4:08

Yeah. So one of the cool things about them is they're, they're ant dispersed. So these little black seeds, dark brown seeds have what's called an Eliasome. So that's this little protein and fat rich sort of appendage that's stuck on the outside of the seed. And ants really like it. It's really nutritious for them. So they'll grab the seed, take it over towards their nest, take off the Eliasome and I guess they eat it or feed it to their young. I'm not sure. And then the seed hopefully can germinate. So you can imagine this. The seeds don't get very far using this method. At least we don't think they can get very far. It's really hard to track an ant, but

Meredith 4:53

yeah, ants are pretty important for seed dispersal for plants, especially here in Canada, right?

jenny 5:00

There are many forest understory plants. Yeah, that have have these adaptations for ant dispersal. But yeah, in terms of eating the seeds, rodents, we think, are into them. And so that the seeds are munched on by little mice and, and moles and voles and things like that, we think. We think that because we've put some seeds inside little cages which would keep out the rodents. And we find many more little baby plants appearing inside those cages than outside those So we take that to mean something probably rodents is munching on. The seeds

Meredith 5:38

that make sense. We don't seem to have a shortage of rodents here in Ontario.

jenny 5:43

No, no, we don't. And there was some there was some research done, you know, sort of in the early 2000s by a researcher named Jane Bowles who's kind of the pioneer of wood poppy research and she was actually watching leaving seeds out and watching little mice come along and and eat them and then finding. Wood poppy seed coats in the mice poop. So yeah, we're, we're pretty sure it's those little,

Meredith 6:09

little rodents that are doing it. And so this is an understory plant. Does it like a specific forest type? Because we seem to have a lot of forests, at least left here in Ontario, but maybe it's not the right type of forest left for wood poppy? What's the limiting factor for these guys?

jenny 6:27

Yeah, it depends what you mean by lots of forest. So in southern Ontario. So if you think of the part that's right in between all the Great Lakes, so kind of going between Windsor and Ontario. Actually, we have hardly any forest left. And at one point, if you measured across that whole area, we were down to, you know, 20 percent or less of the forest that we would have had before European colonization. Now in some counties it's higher. So some counties are reforesting and, and others are still really low. So if you think of Chatham Kent down towards Windsor, I think the forest cover in that county is still 10 percent or less. It's very low. And that's because we have very good land for cropland and we have a lot of people that want to live in this area. So we've lost a lot of forest for. You know, urban development. So the, the wood poppy really only grows in that far south of southern Ontario far southwestern Ontario. So it likes what we call the Carolinian forest, which is the very northern tip of this kind of eastern deciduous forest type that, you know, goes all the way down towards towards Georgia. And so, Yeah, it's, it doesn't seem too picky, but these are usually, you know, sugar maple forest, mixed forest. They'll have some beech in them, they'll have some ash in them and sometimes some of those. Kind of keystone trees we think of as Carolinian trees, like tulip poplar and sassafras and things like that. Sometimes some oaks. It really likes kind of moist riparian type of areas. So, these forests along rivers or streams but it doesn't have to be right by one river. So we, we have a couple of populations that are just in small little woodlots at the back of a farm. That doesn't have a big river flowing through it.

Meredith 8:22

And I guess a lot of the woodlots to with the intensification of agriculture, like we're still losing a lot of those to clearing people who want to be able to to farm more of their property. So, for sure, is that the biggest. Lost like habitat loss, is that the biggest threat to it?

jenny 8:42

I think for any for all plant species at risk in the hot spots, which are, you know, if you think on a national. Basis, it's. Southern Ontario, Southern British Columbia bit of Southern Nova Scotia, and it's because we have this overlap of the southern part is where the highest diversity of plants Exist and it's also where most of our people want to live. So we have this kind of coming together of high diversity plus lots and lots of development. So, yeah, I would say lots of habitat is probably the ultimate cause of, of a lot of plants being rare. In the case of the wood poppy, we know where, well, we know of five extant populations, so five populations that are still existing. And four of those are on private land. I don't know, it depends a lot on the rules. So some counties have very strict rules about, you can't just chop down your forest, even if you own the land, there are, there are. You know, kind of bylaws about that, but in others it's less strict. So yeah, I don't think That most of the landowners currently have plans to chop down their forest, thankfully, but there is 1 site really close to the city of London that the land has been purchased by developer. And I don't think they'll be permitted to chop down the forest, but we're pretty concerned about, you know, townhouses being built right up to the edge of the forest that the wood poppy is in.

Meredith 10:23

And so what does your research focus on with the, with the wood poppy?

jenny 10:29

Yeah, we're doing kind of three main things. So first thing is to actually track the populations and the individuals in the populations so that we can estimate. You know, are these populations increasing? Are we getting more individuals or are they decreasing? And so that we could do something called a population viability analysis where we could try and predict, okay, what is the probability that this population will be here in 50, 100 years? And, and how big will it be? So we're tagging and tracking individual plants, and we're also tagging little baby seedlings that come up. So we can measure things like seedling survival rate, which it turns out is quite low, so they produce tons and tons of seeds. So the biggest population we estimated produced about 200, 000 seeds two years ago. So we're not short on seeds and a bunch of little baby seedlings come up if it's a good year. But a lot of them don't make it to the end of their first summer. So that's the kind of thing we need to know if we're going to predict how the population will

Meredith 11:35

do. That's so interesting, because obviously juvenile mortality, fledgling mortality, that's something that you, you think of, I think quite easily, but juvenile or seedling plant viability or survival isn't something that I necessarily would have thought about as a struggle for plants, but I guess it makes sense. The young are vulnerable.

jenny 12:01

Yeah, and I think that's true for a lot of plants. So, at first, when we were tracking and sort of calculating these survival rates and, and they're quite low, we're thinking, wow, only like 10, maybe 20 percent of the seedlings that come up in the spring will make it to the end of August. Wow, that seems low. But I think that's actually might be similar for many understory plants, even the common ones. And so that's why it's important that they're long lived because they don't have super high success rate for the babies every year. They need the perfect year.

Meredith 12:38

That makes, that makes sense. So that's one thing your lab was, is working on. What are the other, you said two areas? There was three areas? Yeah. So

jenny 12:46

the second thing is. Trying to understand the genetics and I don't do population genetics, but I have some colleagues that I've been working with to help with this. So 1 thing we want to know is, are the Ontario populations distinct genetically from the ones in the United States? Because the kind of core of the range of the wood poppy is in well, Kentucky, I would say is kind of the core of its range. So there's lots of wood poppy populations in Kentucky. And we wonder, you know, do these ones in southern Ontario, which are really kind of near the northern edge of where a wood poppy can grow, do they have unique genetic adaptations or differences that. Might be important if the species is going to track climate change and shift a little bit farther north. And we also wanted to know how much, if any gene flow is going between the populations that are left in Ontario. Because as I said, they're dispersed by ants. So we don't think the seeds are getting very far and they're now in these, you know, forest chunks that are maybe used to be more contiguous and now are Surrounded by cornfields and subdivisions. And, you know, we're pretty sure an ant isn't taking a seed from one population to another and we're not sure about the pollinators. So, we're not sure if a B might go from 1 to the other, but we think it's probably pretty slim. So, yeah, so far, we've done some of that work and it looks like Ontario populations are genetically distinct. From the U. S. ones, which is different. Interesting. And we can see differences between the five populations in Ontario. So they're, you know, the, the degree of difference may not be that big, but we can tell, oh, okay. These individuals from this population have some genetic differences to these ones from a different population. So, yeah, sorry, I'm sort of telling you the punchline before.

Meredith 14:47

No, no, that's great. Punchlines are why people care, right? Yeah. You know, some people like to hold it. But I mean, the fact that this is potentially a subspecies is really important. Like, that's a pretty big deal, especially if you're looking at conservation or maybe a subspecies. I don't

jenny 15:07

think it's quite a subspecies. I don't know. We'd have to ask like, taxonomist how they decide what's different enough to be a sub species. We've grown in our greenhouse. We've grown the Ontario ones and we've grown some seeds that I mean, you can people can order. You can buy wood poppy seeds from native plant nurseries or native plants. Sellers in the U. S. and there's some of those that we can see physical differences between them. We can see their, their leaves are a little different. They're a little hairier in the U. S. interestingly, and the seeds look a little different. So we're so familiar with this plant. We could tell some of them apart. But just an ordinary person, if I said, here's two wood poppies, can you tell the difference? You might be like they look the same. So, yeah, I'm not sure if they're subspecies, but A taxonomist could tell us. There is quantitatively genetic differences that we can see. We don't know if those are because of adaptations or if they're just because of Sort of evolutionary changes that have happened separately from each other for many thousands of years. We'd have to do more complicated sort of adaptive genetic tests to to know that. And also, we'd have to have a genome, which we don't. So, We've sent some tissue to the Canada Biogenome Project, which is sequencing the genomes of a lot of Canada's native species, especially our rare ones. And so hopefully they'll be able to just sequence the entire genome of the wood poppy. And then we can know, sort of like, okay, here's the entire sequence. Here's the genes that are Determining this physiology or process. And here's the genes that are determining this other thing. And then we could tell, okay, which genes are actually different between populations or between Canada and US would poppies and see,

Meredith 17:08

you know, what does that mean? Okay, so there's still a few few steps, but that's very cool. And I mean, I guess it's always exciting when you can see the questions or. You know, the perhaps where the direction the research is going, especially with the genetics. So very cool. And last thing your lab is working on the

jenny 17:27

last thing we're working on is can we use conservation translocations to increase the number of wood poppy populations that we have. So like I said, we have five that we know of in Canada, and four of those are on private land, and like I said, that the, most of those landowners don't have imminent plans to chop down their forest, but wouldn't it be nice if we had a few more populations on protected land, where we can track them and we can know for sure this land is devoted to conservation, it will not be chopped down anytime soon. And so translocations. Are kind of taking plants or seeds and putting them planting them in a new location, either within their kind of historical range of where they grew or sometimes beyond that, if we're trying to sort of assist species and tracking climate change in this case, where we're just trying it within kind of this. Zone of far southwestern Ontario, where they knew we know they would have grown. And so, yeah, we've planted some seeds and some plants that we grew in a greenhouse. We've partnered with the nature Conservancy of Canada with native plant nursery called near Brantford and with the Wilder Institute, which is, based out of the Calgary Zoo, and they do a lot of research on translocations of animals, but they really want to branch out into understanding how to do translocations of endangered plants. So we're, we're working together with that big team to try and see how, okay, can we do this? And what's the best way to do this? And how do we pick the sites? Like, how do we pick where we would plant these things? So we're trying to use something called species distribution models, which can give us kind of like a ranking of different sites and how good they might be and see if that if we use that as a, as a tool to predict. Where are these plantings would do the best

Meredith 19:32

and. I mean, translocation, it seems, I mean, it seems like there's a lot that goes into it. Are there, like, quite a few barriers since, I mean, the plants would have trouble distributing on their own? It seems like a really great idea, but, like, what are the roadblocks or what are the challenges with translocation projects?

jenny 19:53

Yeah, there's a lot of concerns and the first concern is we'd never want to harm the existing populations, because those are like our crown jewels, you know, and so there's, there's concern about if you're taking seeds from those populations, are you harming their ability to be self sustaining? Luckily, like I said, we have a lot of seeds produced by these wood poppy populations and so we could take, you know, Less than way less than 10 percent of the seeds in a year and get. You know, plenty of seeds to work with. There's also a lot of concern about taking the focus away from protecting and monitoring the existing populations. And I totally get that because, you know, if you talk to anyone in the general public and they say, Oh, you have this endangered plant and whatever development is coming through, why don't you just move it, move the plant out of the way, which is the logical thing to do. response. And the trouble is, depending on the plant, lots of translocations have been unsuccessful. So we think we found the perfect place to plant them. We grow the plants, or we take the seeds there, and we plant them. And we think from our eye, this looks like a perfect place for this plant. It looks just like the place we just took it from. And they still don't. Eventually just die out. So it's the most important thing is to protect the existing populations. So I can see why people worry about that. But, yeah, the, the barriers then beyond that are, can you find land and, and land owners that are willing to partner with you on this? Can you get enough plants or propagules without harming the existing populations? Can you get a permit? So, in this case, we're working with a federally endangered plant and also provincially endangered. And so we need, we needed a permit to do this work, to handle it, to collect seeds, to do all that. Prep work and then, of course, there's a massive effort and doing the actual plantings. So Emma, she's the student leading this and she had kind of an army of. Helpers and volunteers, and I think in. When they did the plant, the main planting in 2021, they planted. 1300, somewhere around there, individual wood poppy plants, so you can imagine. And this is not just in your back garden, like, this is in the woods way over there, and we had to, she had to work out how to get all these little baby seedling plants out there and, and plant them. And water them. So we had like, you know, those camp showers where you can fill up water in a bag and then we have those we're lugging those around the forest so we could water in the little baby plants and kind of cute

Meredith 22:56

in

jenny 22:56

many ways,

Meredith 22:57

but like a lot of

jenny 22:58

work. Yeah, we have a lot of very hardy field workers that were, you know, lugging around. And then fences, because we wanted to test, we wanted to know if maybe there's a herbivory component. We do see wood poppies chomped, presumably by deer every once in a while. So we built little tiny sort of 1 meter wide circular fences around some of them. So we could test if that is indeed something that could limit the wood poppy.

Meredith 23:27

Obviously, there's a lot going into translocations and things like that, but then like my experience or like my introduction to wood poppy was, I bought it from a native plant nursery and was able to plant it in my backyard like, is, are those things helping the population? Is that a good thing? Does it even, or like, what are, what are the pros and cons, I guess, of having this plant be so readily available to the public? Because it's a beautiful plant, like I could see why. But people want to have it in their garden. I did.

jenny 23:59

Yeah, for sure. And I was astounded because I thought, wait a second, where are people getting these things? 99. 9 percent sure that those plants are not coming from the Canadian Genetic stock that would be illegal to harvest seeds from an endangered plant and then grow them and then sell them in your nursery. So those are coming from the U. S. I'd like to track this to know for sure, but I'm. I'm betting that they're coming from the U. S. so if you plant them in your garden, I think it's good to raise people's awareness of, you know, native North American plants and to know, like, okay, this. This weird. I don't know, I'm trying to think of an example. This weird petunia that's like Barbie pink is definitely not native. That's a commercial cultivar, but look at all these beautiful things that are, that are native plants. If you had your house right next door to one of the wild populations, then we might worry, oh, what if there would be some. gene flow between your, your presumably United States genetic stock garden wood poppy and, and the ones out in the wild. I think the risk of that, it's pretty low given that they're pretty good at self pollinating. And I don't think, we're not sure what pollinates the most, but it's probably, you know, tiny little surfeit flies or helicted bees or that kind of thing. That That wouldn't go much further than a kilometer or two. So I think the risk is pretty low. I don't think it's really helping with the recovery of the Canadian wood poppies other than it's raising the awareness that this is a species that we have, but we don't have a lot of it. So, if people learn about that, when they buy their commercial would poppy, then maybe that would help.

Meredith 25:48

That's really interesting because I guess I just assumed when I bought this from an Ontario native plant that. It's genetically similar or the same, but obviously, yeah, I knew it was also an endangered plant, so I was a little confused as to how that would happen, but that would make a lot of sense if, you know, maybe they're just grown here, but the genetic stock is from the American population, which in a lot of, not a lot of some states, it's not doing great, but it still has a strong hold. There.

jenny 26:21

Yeah. And we have a lot more work to do to really understand. Like I said, we don't know if the genetic differences are adaptive. And so we couldn't say for sure that having a few genes from the U. S. stock would, you know, be a horrible thing. Maybe it would be a good thing. We don't know. We haven't tested that yet,

Meredith 26:40

right? It could be random mutations that are just in the genome, but not affecting their survival or how they, Okay. Yeah.

jenny 26:49

So when in the in the concept context of translocation there's a lot of wondering and worrying about where should you source the material for those translocations how far away should you go. And so there's a lot of concern about. You, you want the plants that have the genes that are kind of adapted to wherever you're going to plant them. So if you get seeds or plants from too far away, that could be bad. That could bring in genes that are not well adapted to that situation. On the other hand. Sometimes a little hybrid vigor can be good and can also kind of bolster your, the population's ability to handle kind of wildly fluctuating conditions, you know, so if you had a bad drought one year, and you had source some plants from a more droughty area. That could be good because then you would have some individuals there that are already kind of have the means to handle those droughty situations. But it's still a big debate in the, in the translocation world of like how far away is okay to get your plants. So I would never advocate that we should bring plants from Kentucky and plant them in Ontario. I don't think we should do that. Also, especially because. We can get plenty of seeds here in Ontario, so we don't need to do that, but that sometimes might be something we need to do for a species that doesn't produce a lot of seeds or for species that are extirpated from Canada, so we don't have any of our own populations left.

Meredith 28:18

Yeah. This seems like there is, I'm really excited because you said you're working with like the Wilder Institute that usually does animal translocation to see this really be, I guess a protocol really developed. In Canada for for our own plans, because correct me if I'm wrong. This is a little bit more of a common practice in the state, or is this still a pretty new thing in general?

jenny 28:43

It's way more common in the U. S. and also Europe and also Australia. So, you know, the conservationists there are really getting on board with doing this doesn't mean it's successful all the time. Like I said, lots and lots of them fail, and especially with finicky, tricky things like orchids and, you know, things that we don't even know how to germinate. So that makes it really hard. Canada, for some reason, has been very hesitant to use. Reintroduction or translocation as a recovery tool. And I think it's a lot to do with those concerns. I mentioned before about, you know, we have to focus on the existing populations. We don't want to harm those existing populations. And we don't want people to think, Oh, you can build a Walmart wherever you want, or a golf course or a subdivision. You can just move the plants because we know doesn't often work. often doesn't work. However, if the definition of recovery is having more populations than we have now, and we're dealing with a situation where this little ant is not going to be able to take this seed over there to a perfectly suitable forest on protected land, I think we need to Help the plants out a bit. So yeah, there was a there were some researchers at the Wilder Institute that looked through all the published recovery strategies for species at risk, including plants, and they kept track of how many sort of mentioned reintroduction or translocation as potential tool for recovery of those species. And it was a huge number of the plants. It was like over 100 plants, but they could find evidence of. People trying reintroduction of translocation for only a handful of plants, like 7 or 8 out of over 100. So I think it's time. We really. Got to work trying to learn how to do this and it won't work for every species. Not every species is amenable to this kind of strategy, but some of them might be do, might do really well with it. And wouldn't it be nice if we could take some species off the species at risk list instead of just keeping adding more and more and none of them improving enough to get off the list.

Meredith 31:00

Do you know of any, like, has there been success stories within the wood poppy populations or are there any other like plant translocation success stories that you can think of?

jenny 31:14

Yeah, I mean, we're delighted because the, the ones that we've planted are doing really well. So seeds, not so much. So, like I said, the seeds, if you take. If we take some seeds and we plant them somewhere else, we might get 10 or 11 percent of them germinate, and then maybe only 30 percent of those survive to the next year. But if you grow a little baby plant in the greenhouse and then outplant it, we're getting, you know, 70, 80, sometimes 90 percent survival. And last year, so, well, this summer, so I guess this is the 21, 22, the third year since we planted them. We're seeing little baby seedlings that have been produced there by plants that flowered their second year. So that was really exciting to see. We think we had a hunch that it could work because back in 2000, so more than 20 years ago Jane Bowles, the researcher I mentioned before, who was kind of the pioneer of wood poppy research, planted some plants In this ravine at the Royal Botanical Gardens, which is not one of the original places. We know they grew, but those plants are still there. So more than 20 years later, they're still there. So we were pretty optimistic that this might be a strategy that could really work for the wood poppy and it would make us feel a whole lot better to have these plants and their genetic uniqueness, whatever that may be. In more than five places and in places that we know are protected. One of the populations on private land had only one plant in it last year. It's been declining for a while. So we, we have hopes that plant might make it. But, you know, it's, I think it's important that we don't have all our eggs in five baskets, so to speak, that we have a few more

Meredith 33:22

populations. That makes a lot of sense. And yeah, the fact that some of your translocation, I guess, babies are now having their own babies. That's usually the definition of a, of a successful outcome for for translocation, whether it be plants or animals, because obviously, once you do the effort. You want it to be sustainable. So that's amazing. And the fact that you had the bit of a historic, I guess, case study, knowing that it could work, especially since 20 years ago, I'm guessing that, you know, our endangered species legislation would have been a little bit more relaxed or we didn't really have any, I don't think 20 years ago. So I guess that's what made the move of the wood poppy. It was a little bit easier back then, or I was able to be brought to the RPG, but now I need to have a little field trip and yeah,

jenny 34:16

for sure. And I mean, there's a lot more work to do. Like, we, we want to know, okay, how many of those little babies of the babies survive and we want to track these populations long term with our partners so that we can really see how well they do and are they really self sustaining. But. Yeah, it was very stressful planting out, you know, more than a thousand plants and just waiting till the next year and thinking, Oh, I hope they don't all die.

Meredith 34:47

That

jenny 34:49

would be

Meredith 34:50

so sad. That is, that is the suspense right with. I mean, just our climate spring is such a hopeful time but waiting through that winter for birds to come back for butterflies to emerge. It's a, it's a waiting game. It's one of the things that you just can't rush.

jenny 35:08

Yeah, I was texting Emma, the student that led the translocations, the second year back going, did they survive? What, what's happening? Are they okay? Cause I wasn't out there right away. So when she sent pictures of blooming wood poppies in their new homes, it was pretty exciting. Do you still get out into the field a decent amount? Yeah, I was out this summer a bit helping, helping my students there. And we were, counting the little baby seedlings that had just been born and originally we were going to tag them all and then we soon realized, you know, some of our planting sites plots within the site had like 80 baby seedlings. So we kind of went, oh, we're not, If we tag every individual one, it's going to take us like months and months. So we ended up just counting them, but yeah, that's what really fuels me is being out there in the forest and, and seeing the plants and, you know, getting to, getting to know them again. Do you have a favorite story from

Meredith 36:17

being out in the field? Cause

jenny 36:19

this summer was amazing because we, we know these, Wood poppy seeds are ant dispersed, but we've never seen this in action. And we were monitoring them, Emma and I, just at the time that the seeds were falling. So we were, you know, at this little plot where Emma had planted six or nine plants two years ago, three years ago, and The seeds were falling and she, she said, you know, Oh, look, the seeds are falling. And then suddenly she said, Oh my God, there's an ant. There's an ant. There's another ant. They're going after the seeds. So we spent, I don't know, like an hour trying to video these ants grabbing the seeds. I can send you a video if you want. That's very, very cute. Please do. Very bugs life. Yeah. And just. You know how the forest floor is, it's covered in leaves and all different litter and sort of trying to see like, Ooh, where are they taking them? And that's when we started thinking, like, how would anyone even track how far these seeds are going? Because, you know, the little ant grabs it, you can maybe track it for, you know, 10 centimeters and then it disappears under a leaf. And you're like, I don't know where that thing went. But yeah, we were super excited to see that in action and the seeds are pretty big compared to a tiny little ant. So it's pretty crazy to see these tiny little ants grabbing these seeds that are like, bigger than them practically and hauling them away.

Meredith 37:45

So, Are they similar to like the size of a poppy seed you'd find on a bagel or they're a bit bigger than that. Okay.

jenny 37:52

Yeah, they're a bit bigger than that. I'm trying to think what they'd be like, maybe sort of like a quinoa. Do you ever eat quinoa? Yeah. Like a quinoa grain, like sort of like that size, maybe. A

Meredith 38:03

little bit bulkier, a little bit more. I guess it's got that big fat coat on it too, or nutritional coat. So, yeah. And I guess we've talked. Well, actually, okay, before we move away from the wood poppy, do you have a favorite thing about the wood poppy? That might be a tough one. I'm sure there's so much to love.

jenny 38:24

I mean, I think it's the same thing I love about all plants and that's just how enigmatic they are. I mean, they're, they're living creatures, but they're so different than us. And we can't, we can't ask them, you know, why are you growing here and not over there? Like what's the problem? And they surprise you, you know, so, before we started this project, I'd spent three or four summers just looking for about 40 different. Rare plants throughout forests in southern Ontario, and sometimes they pop up in the most unexpected places, you know, you come into a site that you're going to survey and you think to yourself, Oh, that plant's never going to be here. And then it shows up or a different one shows up. And yeah, I just think I, I enjoy studying them because they're so different from us, but they're so successful at what they

Meredith 39:22

do. Yeah, they've. been evolving for so long that they've become these really special, like each one is so specialized and so unique. And it's really a shame if we were to lose a single one of these species. So your work is really important, but for people who are listening, and maybe this is their introduction to wood poppies and they're falling in love with them and they want to help. Is there that, you know, a community science. Project people can, you know, support, or is it just supporting sustainable development or reforestation projects? Like, how can people who want to help help?

jenny 40:02

Yeah, so first thing is to learn more about plants and and our native plants and the rare native plants. I think. You know, the, whoever is doing the PR on invasive plants is doing a very good job. Cause almost every landowner I meet is like, I think I might have giant hogweed. Can you check if I have giant hogweed? Like everyone knows about giant hogweed and phragmites and garlic mustard. But do you know about the, you know, rare and endangered species that might be in your area? So, you know, the field botanists of Ontario, your local naturalist society, Joining in on those things just to educate yourself. If you're interested in learning is great. I also really advocate supporting your local nature trust or land trust. So there's a bunch of them. And if you live in our Southwestern Ontario, but there's, they're everywhere across the country. Here in Southern Alberta, I found the Southern Alberta land trust society, I think it's called. And these are the people who are, you know, Making sure we set aside some land for the plants and the animals, you know, that can't be developed. That can't be turned into a parking lot or a golf course. So supporting those organizations. It's really important. And standing up for. Protection of habitat, you know, so I know in southern Ontario, there's a lot of kafuffle about. Should we have a new highway? Should we have highway 413? Should we chop down a whole bunch of forests and wetlands to make way for this highway? Supporting initiatives not to do that kind of thing and to save save land, especially forest land and natural areas for, for species other than us definitely would help. Yeah, you think you more specific things?

Meredith 41:55

No, no, that's great. That's I love the call out to to go on a field botanist walk or even field naturalist. Clubs. They all have nature walks and the amount of knowledge that are in those groups. It's fantastic. If you think you might be curious about plants, go on one of those and your mind will be blown. Yeah. So that's, that's a great call out. Do you think there's like, well, I love that you said that these plants are enigmatic and, you know, we don't know everything about them, but if. If people were to, you know, learn something from the wood poppy, or if the wood poppy were to, like, have a superpower, like, what do you think it would be? A little bit of a wild question there.

jenny 42:42

If the wood poppy had a superpower. Yeah, I don't know that the wood poppy. I mean, I've said to my students a lot. Why is this thing rare? Like you said, people have it in their gardens. The ones at the Royal Botanical Garden are doing great. They don't seem like they're that picky and yet we only know of five populations. I think that. There's a myth that maybe they were always super rare, and I don't think we can say that with any assurance because, yes, they have this giant bright yellow flower, but unless you're there at the right time of year to see when they're flowering, the rest of the time, they just kind of blend in with everything else. They blend in with the blue cohosh and the ferns and everything else that's in the forest understory. And if you weren't a botanist kind of prepared to differentiate them, you probably wouldn't notice them. So we found a population no one knew about in 2015. So we used to think there were only four populations. Now we know there are five, probably 300 years ago, before Europeans came and chopped down all the forests. I'm betting there were way more than five. Maybe not as many as, say, trillion populations. But I think, you know, to say that we have always only had a handful of populations, we, we can't say that at all. So maybe the wood poppies lesson is there's, there's always hope, you know, and you never know what you might find. Maybe in your woodlot, there's a population of wood poppies that nobody knows about. So keep your eyes peeled, you know, mid May to mid June for these bright yellow flowers and let me know if you find them.

Meredith 44:28

Yeah, especially, I don't know, but it sounds like they kind of come out around the same time mosquitoes come out, so maybe people are avoiding those woodlots, you know, they're like, oh, it's spring, won't go walking back there anymore. We'll see it again in the fall. So you never know. So, okay, so that's a lot about the wood poppy. Last question for you. And I just want to know a little bit more about and how you and how you started working with, with, with, with poppies and how you got into this line of work or research.

jenny 44:59

Yeah, I mean, I, it depends how far back you want to go. So take me back. Take you all the way back to high school. And I had a science teacher, a biology teacher that. That the botany part and didn't skimp on that part. So we learned about plants and how they photosynthesize. And I thought, Oh, these things are interesting. And I really liked being outside. You know, I really liked doing canoe trips in Algonquin and noticing plants. So I was kind of, you know, into plant ecology early on, at least sort of had a vague idea that I would like it. And then my first job after my undergrad was in the Florida Keys, and this was a study about the, the, well, they're called pine broccolins. They're this weird There's this weird community type, at least weird to me, where the overstory was sort of a thin layer of Florida slash pine, a pine tree. And then the understory was like sort of hardwood shrubs plus palms, like palms and palmettos. Yeah, and we were tracking, you know, all these different species of plants so we could understand the impacts of prescribed burns. And I remember learning to identify all these different plants and then I would go home. Back to Southern Ontario. That's where I grew up and be like, wow, I, this is weird. I don't know what all these plants are. Like, I, I need to learn. So yeah, I guess it was after my PhD in 2014 when I started thinking, like, how could I do some more research with rare plants in Ontario? And that's when I started the project to see if we could use these species distribution models to find new pot, like, Undiscovered populations. So I just, you know, drove all around Southern Ontario, looking for some of these, these rare plants and it was actually, so it was 2015. We were at this private. Landowner site. I forget what we were. I forget what our target was. I think it might have been golden seal. And then there was a whole bunch of this plant called American gromwell, which is also rare in in Canada and in southern Ontario. So I was ecstatic. I was like, Oh, my gosh. To my field assistant Amber. I was like, look, look at all this American gromwell was taking all these pictures. And suddenly she says is this a wood poppy? And I'm thinking to myself, no, oh, it'll probably be there's a. Exotic plant called greater selendyne that kind of looks like a wood poppy, but isn't they're they're related, but it's not so I thought to myself. Oh, yeah, it's probably just some greater selendyne. And then I looked and it was a wood poppy. And that was the new population that no one had known about. So, yeah, that kind of started a seed, I guess, in my mind of like, how If we're going to recover these plants, if we're going to have more populations than we have now, we might have to help them get their seeds, get started in new places that are perfectly suitable, but they're just too far away for an ant or a bird or whatever normally disperses them to sort of effectively get them there. So, I guess it was 2014, 2015, I started thinking about how could we really do this and why aren't we doing it?

Meredith 48:34

Very good questions. And sounds like you've been putting a lot of thought into plants for a long time, which probably means you're in the right career. Yeah. But what, do you know what's next on the horizon for either wood poppy studies or are you going to try and branch out to translocations? What, what's next for you?

jenny 48:59

Yeah, I feel a, I feel a groundswell in Canada among people that work in plant conservation that we need to kind of try a few more of these translocations, see if they would work. And I think there are a lot more candidates other than the wood poppy that we could try. So hopefully in collaboration with, with other people, I can help. with some of those efforts. We, we have done some translocations with I think it's special concern. It's called the crooked stem aster. So we were monitoring those two, and that is a wind dispersed plant. So you would think it could get around a little better. But, you know, studies have shown even things that have, you know, adaptations on their seeds for them to fly in the wind. Even then, if they're in a sort of deep understory forest, they might only go. You know, 10 meters or something. So, yeah, I hope to help more with that. With collaborators learning more about the, the genetic diversity amongst the populations of some of these rare plants in Canada the whole genetic. Quantitative genetics is, you know, beyond my expertise, but it's really interesting to. To look into that. So with collaborators, I hope to help more with that. And then the demographic stuff is really exciting. Yeah. So Amy Wiedenfeld, she's a, she's a. PhD student, and she's working on this with four different species, including the wood poppy and try and get a sense of, you know, what, what is the, are these populations viable? What are those bottlenecks? You know, is it the seedling survival that is really kind of limiting them? And, you know, we know it's going to get hotter probably as the climate changes. Is that going to be good for these? Plant species isn't going to be bad for them. What's going to happen? So, yeah, I hope to keep going with all of those.

Meredith 50:59

Well, I hope you're right that this is a turning point and that, you know, there's a lot of successful translocation projects in the future. But thank you so much, Jenny, for chatting with me. I really enjoyed this conversation. It was fantastic.

jenny 51:13

You're welcome. It was a pleasure.

51:16

And that's a wrap on this episode with the wood poppy and Jenny McCune. A massive, thank you to Jenny for taking the time to share her research with us. And if you love this episode, Least subscribe and leave us a review. It helps rarefied reach. More people who care about our planets, rarest creatures. And don't forget to follow us on Instagram at rarefied dot pod and sign up for our newsletter on our website for updates and behind the scenes content. Next time, we'll be heading north into the boreal forest to learn about a fierce and fluffy predator. You won't want to miss it. So until next time, get out there and explore the wild because every species has a story and every one of us can make a difference. Thanks for listening. And until next time happy trails