Rare Plant Patrol

As the community science coordinator for the DNR’s Minnesota Biological Survey, Deanna Leigh’s job is to harness the skills and resources of the public to do conservation science. Her main focus is the MN PlantWatch program, which since 2023 has trained and guided 72 volunteers to find and document rare plant species at sites across Minnesota. Because searching for rare plants is so time- and resource-intensive, the survey’s professional botanists can’t possibly put in all the hours and legwork it would require to find, document, and monitor every population. Through her role in PlantWatch, a partnership of the DNR and the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, Leigh helps fill in some of the gaps with her team of ready-to-roam volunteers, using their findings to update state rare species records and databases. We caught up with her in early spring, as she was preparing for a flurry of seasonal training and fieldwork.

Q | Minnesota has around 300 plants that are listed as threatened, endangered, or of special concern. How do you decide which ones to focus on in MN PlantWatch?
A lot of it has to do with what’s approachable from both the identification and the accessibility standpoint. We’re not taking on things that are so hard to identify that you basically need to be a professional botanist. It needs to be relatively easy to identify the plant. But then we’re also looking at sites that are reasonably accessible. We are not going deep into bog habitat where it’s like four miles in. We look at sites that are not always easy to get to, but they’re within the grasp of most able-bodied people.

Q | Why is this project particularly well suited to a community science approach?
There’s a long history of people contributing to botany from a community standpoint. Especially in the northeast part of our country, there’s a lot of what you would call amateur botanists, or people in the general public who are really interested in plants and plant identification and contributing to plant conservation. And we’ve found that here in Minnesota, when we launched this program, we had an overwhelming response of people who are interested in participating. So we know the desire is out there for people to use their knowledge, as well as increase their knowledge, about our plants in Minnesota. I think we’re tapping into the desire that’s already there for people to learn these things and participate in a volunteer capacity to help move forward conservation in Minnesota. It’s been really great to see how the community has responded to this project.

Q | Do you have some interesting stories from the field? Any notable finds, notable happenings, or challenging conditions that you had to deal with?
Ah, that sounds like every single day! [laughs] One of the really fun things about the work is that we often find new populations that were not formerly documented. In 2023 we found six new records, and in 2024 we found 22 new records. This happens for multiple reasons. One is that we have a lot of people on the ground looking, and because of that, we tend to notice more things. Another reason is that we’re working in high-quality habitat, and where you find one rare species, it’s pretty likely you’ll find more than one rare species. And our data for the state are not complete. Despite having had the Minnesota Biological Survey do a pretty comprehensive survey of the state (see “The Big Reveal,” March–April 2020), and despite having a lot of really good professionals out there working, it’s a very big state, and there are lots of places where nobody has ever looked, or where somebody looked but didn’t have time to do a thorough survey. And with us revisiting these sites, we might find something that somebody else didn’t find. So that’s always really exciting, and it’s probably one of the most fun parts of the job: when we find something new that we didn’t know was in a place.

Q | What are some memorable plants you’ve found?
One that I enjoyed finding last summer was soapberry, or Shepherdia canadensis, which is a shrub, and it’s got these beautiful leaves. They’re dark green and covered in tiny little hairs that make them look shiny. They also have this rusty-colored scale on the leaf. So they have a unique appearance compared to most of our other plants in Minnesota. Another cool one is a short-lived spring-blooming species called old field toadflax, or Nuttallanthus canadensis. It’s a knee-high, slender flowering plant, so skinny it can blend in with the grasses. It’s a prairie species, so it can be very hard to find unless it’s got this tiny blue-violet flower in bloom. So you have to get it just at the right time to be able to find it, but it really pops out once you do.

Q | What are the main goals of MN PlantWatch?
There are three main focuses. The first one is to recruit and train volunteers to do this work. So that’s a big component of my job: reaching out to the public, engaging them in plant conservation. The next goal is actually conducting the survey work. Right now we are focused on revisiting locations where rare plants have been found in the past, but we don’t know the current status of the species. So we go back to those sites and survey, basically just by walking out in the woods or the prairie or whatever habitat we’re in. And if we do find it, we try to get an accurate idea of how many plants are there. We also record information about the habitat and the general health of the population, as well as whether there are any potential threats and if there’s any obvious type of land management activities going on. The third main component is seed collection. We are actually banking seed as a way to store genetic material for the future, and this involves identifying populations where there are enough plants to collect seed from. And then, of course, we have to have all the right permits in place, because these are oftentimes threatened and endangered species. We only take a certain amount of seed based on how many plants there are, the life cycle of the plant, and what’s appropriate to collect.

Q | What do you do with the seed?
Those seed are brought over to the rare plant seed bank at the Landscape Arboretum, and they are used for multiple purposes. One is just to have a genetic repository of each species, so we know what the genetics are, with a representation of each species from different places throughout the state. The seed also supports research at the arboretum. They’re doing research into propagation and how to grow these species in a greenhouse-type setting. The idea is we could, in the future, perhaps use the seed to augment existing populations, or in some cases where we’ve lost populations in the wild, we may be able to reintroduce them.

Q | The information gathered by MN PlantWatch is used to update the state’s rare plant database, right?
Yes. It’s the Natural Heritage Information System, and it’s actually a collection of databases that includes rare plant records, and that is where our data will go. We basically have our own database where all MN PlantWatch information is stored, but then we use that information to update the NHIS, and we also are using it to find our sites. So we might query the NHIS database about a particular rare plant in a state park, for example, and we get a map along with some information about when it was last surveyed, how many plants were found, where they were. We’ll go back to that location and try to find the species and get a count. And then the information we collect will provide an update in the database.

Q | What attracted you to your role as a community science coordinator?
Before this job, I worked with DNR Parks and Trails for about five or six years. I was a resource specialist, and that was really focused on habitat management within state park units. It was really good work, but really heavily focused on land management. And my passion really is more research and science-based data collection. So the biggest thing that attracted me to this position was the opportunity to get back into scientific research. I also really enjoy teaching, and there’s a heavy teaching component with this position, training in new folks and getting out in the field together and learning together while we botanize.

MN PlantWatch has finalized its volunteer roster for 2025. To learn more about being a PlantWatch volunteer and sign up for information updates, visit sites.google.com/view/mnplantwatch/volunteering. Funding for this project was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources.