Fort Ord Seed Picking - by D

Today I went to Fort Ord to pick seeds from native plants.

In the morning, my mom said, "We are going to do a forest work-out!" When we got to Fort Ord my mom was surprised how many cars there were.

Our docent was named Shawn. He handed us a bag for picking seeds and we started walking up the road. The first native plant we picked was the sticky monkey flower.

Shawn showed us how many pods we should pick. He said everybody should only pick two percent of the pods.

We walked up a hill and he showed us how to pick mock heather. We learned about five other plant species, too - manzanita, black sage, coyote bush, California sage, and chemise. I learned that you have to plant the manzanita within one kilometer of where you take the seeds. California sage is not a true sage, but black sage is. And Shawn will plant all of the native seeds that we collected.