An update on the Time to Restore project

Time to Restore

Hello USA-NPN,

Welcome, and thank you for your interest in the Time to Restore project! This is the first in a series of monthly newsletters for those participating in the project in New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana. If you know others who may be interested in this newsletter, please send it their way! If you were forwarded this message, you can sign up to get on our list here.

If you are new to the project or just need some help getting started with data collection, we'd love to know how best we can help you! This three-question survey asks how best we can help:

Complete the survey

You can also find training materials and other resources on our Time to Restore page.

Plant of the Month: Butterfly milkweed, Asclepias tuberosa

Each month, we will feature one of the plants on the Time to Restore list. Butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) has been identified as a priority species for both Louisiana and Texas. The range of this species spans from California all the way up to Northeast Canada and includes all four of our Time to Restore states.

This species can be easy identified by its large, flat-topped clusters of bright-orange flowers. This species is still flowering in many parts of the South Central region.

If you are looking for ways to identify this species if it does not have flowers, the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center says "The leaves are mostly alternate, 1 1/2-2 1/4 inches long, pointed, and smooth on the edge...The abundance of stiff, lance-shaped foliage provides a dark-green backdrop for the showy flower heads." Unlike other milkweed species, the stems and leaves do not have milky sap.

You can observe this species as a single plant in Nature's Notebook. If you have more than one plant, consider monitoring 2-3 individuals at the same site to capture the variation between plants. If you have multiple plants growing together that are difficult to differentiate, register the plant as a patch and make your observation considering the patch as a whole.

For the plant pictured above, you would report:

Flowers or flower buds - yes

Open flowers - yes

Fruits - no

Ripe fruits - no

If you were also answering the optional intensity question, you would report:

Flowers of flower buds - 11-100 (counting the number of inflorescences)

Open flowers - 95% or more

Questions? Reach out to Erin@usanpn.org.

Training options in your state

Louisiana

Interested in organizing a training for your group in Louisiana? Reach out to Gina Lloyd to schedule.

Texas

Interested in organizing a training for your group in Texas? Reach out to David Gwin to schedule.

We launched the Time to Restore project in Texas this year, and David has been hard at work promoting the project across this large state. As you can see in the table below, there are many Texas counties that are represented by Master Naturalist and NPSOT chapters that have already approved the project. We are looking to expand to more counties in the South and East parts of Texas. Let us know if you are already planning on participating in the project but your county is not represented below!

North Texas Counties	Dallas, Denton, Cooke, Kaufman, Montague, Parker, Rockwall, Parker, Wise
Central Texas Counties	Bell, Hays
Southeast Texas Counties	Austin, Brazoria, Brazos, Burleson, Colorado, Fayette, Fort Bend, Galveston, Grimes, Harris, Lee, Leon, Madison, Montgomery, Robertson, Walker, Waller, Washington, Wharton