Monthly programs for 2025 will be held on the third Friday of the month at 7:00 p.m.  Whenever possible, programs will be hybrid, both live and via Zoom. Check for each program. When the program is live, come to Room 111 in WNMU’s Harlan Hall, at the corner of 12th and Alabama Streets, to attend in person. Gila Native Plant Society members will receive a Zoom link by email before the program; any others interested may request a link from gilanative@gmail.com. All are welcome.

The New Mexico Department of Transportation (NMDOT) maintains approximately 25,000 miles of roadsides. While safety is always a primary driver, NMDOT is also responsible for good environmental stewardship within its rights of way. To that end, it isimplementing an Integrated Vegetation Management (IVM) program.Bill and Andrew will explain what the IVM Program is and what is being done to improve vegetation management. They will then introduce the Gila Vegetation Management Plan.

Val and J bought one of Silver City’s fixer-upper houses in 2021. Alongside a complete home renovation, they also planned to rehabilitate the yard with native plants. They will discuss the challenges they faced and how they navigated the charges against them when they were cited under Silver City’s nuisance ordinance for their initial efforts in the yard rehabilitation process.

Val Weston and J. Brandon are native plant enthusiasts who moved to Silver City for the outdoor, art, and motorcycling opportunities. They were delighted to also find an active and supportive native plant community in Silver City as they took on their yard rehabilitation project.

The work of pollination is never over—even after dark! When our day-active (diurnal) pollinators turn in for the evening, nocturnal pollinators such as moths, bats, beetles, and even some species of bees take on the night shift to feast on nectar. We are just beginning to understand the importance of these nocturnal flower visitors for pollination of wild and managed plants.

As the Southwest Pollinator Conservation Specialist, Kaitlin works to create climate-resilient, connected pollinator habitat in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. She collaborates with and educates public and private urban land managers in New Mexico and the desert Southwest on pollinator-friendly practices for landscaping, gardening, and open space restoration.

Donna Stevens at Aldo Leopold Wilderness boundary

Although flowering plants may be dormant for the winter, we can revisit the glory of the past summer in photos and stories. Donna Stevens and Jim McGrath, seasonal botanists with the Gila National Forest, will present a program about their 2024 fieldwork and current projects. Topics will include invasive plant status and removal strategies, invasive plant problems in the wilderness, inventory and monitoring of the Gila’s rare plant populations, and the history and current status of the Cherry Creek restoration project. The program will be live at Harlan Hall, Room 111, on the WNMU Campus. You can also attend via Zoom, a link to be announced ten days prior.

https://youtu.be/53Jse7dxy4E

Baby Aster (Chaetopappa ericoides) photo by Russ Kleinman

The members of the Silver City Flora team, introduced by William Norris, Professor of Biology at WNMU, will discuss an ongoing plant inventory in Silver City. Team members will present topics including project goals, methods, results to date, and interesting discoveries. The program will be live at Harlan Hall, Room 111, on the WNMU Campus. You can also attend via Zoom, a link to be announced ten days prior.

https://youtu.be/kAp0LSyhGVI?si=KNQMLbUTCVfLMzrp

Galls are growths on plants caused by another organism and can be all sorts of shapes and forms. If you’ve seen them, you may have wondered: what is the function of these weird growths, and how can I identify them? Quin Baine, Museum Research fellow at the Museum of Southwestern Biology, will summarize the main groups of insect gall formers, their specialized relationships to plants, and how to recognize common galls of native plants of the southwest. Gain an insight into an unusual plant interaction, and hopefully be inspired to start identifying species of a cool and understudied group of plant-dependent animals.

Quin Baine is a Museum Research fellow at the Museum of Southwestern Biology and a Ph.D. candidate in Biology at the University of New Mexico. She is an entomologist by training and has been working to establish a gall specimen collection at the museum. Her current research is on the highly diverse gall-associated communities of rubber rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa) in the Southwest.

To see the images shown, click on the link. We do not have a sound recording, but some explanatory captions were added:https://youtu.be/AnWE6ZdW-Qk

A view of Silva Creek Botanical Garden

GNPS members Elroy and Betsy will trace the development of the garden from a barren mass of weeds to the beautiful native plant garden it is today.  Photos of the garden’s development and the many volunteers who made it happen will provide the base for this presentation.

https://youtu.be/WoFr2Ho_T2Y

Melissodes Bee

This evening program was presented by Oliver Neria, PhD student at the University of Texas at El Paso, based on his research.

Oliver gave a brief overview of our native bees and their life histories, floral preferences, and nesting behaviors, as well as strategies that thoughtful gardeners can use to create useful bee habitat.

This program was via Zoom only.