Jackie Mette, Class of 2024
The Time To Restore project (TTR), led by the USA National Phenology Network and covering the states of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, is gathering long‐term data on the timing of flowering and fruiting of plants on their native plant priority species list. The project seeks to generate better information about native plant nectar availability and seed production timings to help those working on pollinator restoration to better know what to plant and when to best harvest seeds. This data helps those working on pollinator restoration to choose plant mixes that provide the broadest time window of nectar availability for pollinators. It also helps them plan for the harvesting of seeds. Long‐term data also captures the extent of year‐to‐year variability in flowering/fruiting timings and illuminates any longer‐term trends.
Texas participants in the TTR project select one or more native plant species from a list of 29 that have been prioritized for focused study. The participant’s selected plants can be located on either public or private property and can occupy an area as small as a planted area in a participant’s personal garden/wildscape or be naturally occurring plants found in an extensive natural area or public park. Participants can monitor as few as one individual plant (or patch of that plant species). Additional plants can be added to the monitoring at any time. All data is useful. There are no set requirements for how often a participant needs to monitor their plant(s). During times of the year when not much is changing for the plant – mid‐winter, for example – observations can be made less often. During times of the year when the plant is undergoing the major transitions of its life cycle (presenting its various “phenophases”), it is most useful for observations to be made more frequently (maybe twice per week). The primary goal is to capture (as closely as possible) the dates of the start/peak/end of flowering and the start/peak/end of fruiting (seed production).
Data collection can be reported in Nature’s Notebook (website and/or app) or in iNaturalist (using the phenology annotations feature). Both applications are free and available to project participants.
Detailed information about the Time To Restore project can be found on their website: https://usanpn.org/community/TimeToRestore
Scroll down to the “News and Updates” section of the webpage to view a project overview recording, a recording of the Texas‐specific training given by David Gwin, and to sign up for the monthly project newsletter.
The project coordinator for Texas is:
David Gwin – [email protected] (yes, that’s a “y”!)
The project manager for the entire project is:
Erin Posthumus [email protected]
Please consider helping with data collection for this project.
