Lupine meeting yielded news

The lupine meeting at Wekiwa Springs State Park was worth attending.

I found out more plantings were planned for Lake Blue, scheduled within the next few weeks, so there's plenty of prep work to be done at the planting site Cheryl and Juliette select.
The big issue is making sure the next patch is relaitvely close to the first to make cross pollination, if that happens (no one was totally sure; there's a lot that remains to be discovered) between the existing plants and the next group.

I learned today that a Scrub Lupine's lifespan is typically five years, which makes getting plants in, blooming and seeding and producing seedlings very important. Without successful recruitment, we're toast.

I also learned that winter planting is preferable to allow the plants to become established before they have to deal with the stresses of late spring with hot weather and rain, drought stress and fungus.

The survival rate for the spring planting at Lake Blue was roughly half that of the winter planting.

I also had a chance to meet some of the other folks involved in some way in the project. Great bunch of folks, all very knowledgeable and dedicated. I was able to share some of my experience from Lake Blue. We're all intent on helping each other in any way we can to make this experiment works.

One other topic came up today, which was the need to try to find additional sites for plantings and to find the money to purchase and manage the sites. Polk County is tapped out for now. I'm not sure the state is in much better shape. The feds might have resources and there was talk of contacting NGOs, such as TNC to find out what they might be able to do.

The recovery plan anticipates additional sites with viable populations before downlisting is even possible and quite a few sites to delist. That could take some time, it would seem. But extinction is forever, which is even longer.