Tag: volunteer

Winter Seed Sorting

This past October, 2022, the Cofrin Center for Biodiversity hosted a native seed collecting activity for the UW – Green Bay Day of Service.  After this bountiful harvest of seedheads from a variety of native species, including purple cone flower (Echinacea purpurea) rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium), yellow coneflower (Ratibida pinnata), Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans), common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), and more, we have been working the past couple of months on “cleaning” our seeds.

Over the past couple of months we have held several work sessions both by hand and with a hammer mill in the UWGB Greenhouse.

volunteers cleaning seedheads into bins
Eco-Friendly Phoenix volunteers hand divide seeds and dried flower debris into separate bins. December, 2022. Photo credit: Bobbie Webster
students putting seedheads into a hammermill machine
UWGB students, Sam Gerarden and Patrick Brodhagen, load bags of previously collected native seedheads into a hammermill, which breaks the seeds apart from the dead seedhead. January, 2023. Photo credit: Andrew LaPlant.

As of this week, we are almost 90 percent finished cleaning our native seeds!  We now have over eight pounds of native seed which will be used to further enhance pollinator habitat in areas like the Keith White Prairie, the Cofrin Arboretum Gateway, Wequiock Creek Natural Area, and possibly the Shorewood Recreation Area!