SHS students are sweet on bitterbrush

If there is such a thing as developing a caring association between bitterbrush, Purshia tridentata - primary mule deer winter food - and Homo sapiens, Sisters High School science teacher Rima Givot will help make it happen.

Every Friday, she takes her bundled-up biology students out into the cold and snow of the high school's backyard to study bitterbrush growing on the edge of the sports training field and in the Trout Creek Wildlife Study area beyond.

Jacobie Petterson, a sophomore in Rima's class, said, "We are studying the bitterbrush and insects to become familiar with how they interact with each other and their dependence on one another. As we look at when the bitterbrush starts to bud, we can see the huge affect weather plays in plant and insect life. The field study also requires us to really study what's around us and see the changes that are happening."

Last Friday, the students were introduced to the relationship between a tiny gall wasp and the bitterbrush's reaction to injury when the wasp lays its eggs in the stem of the plant. The injured plants develop ragged, thumbnail-sized woody tissue that makes it almost impossible for an animal to discover and eat the wasp larva when the eggs hatch.

Kristen Sanders, another of Rima's students, has taken her view of the study one step further when she asked these questions: "How does the budding of bitterbrush, emerging of insects and the arrival of bluebirds relate to each other?" Her hypothesis is: "If bitterbrush buds, then the insects will merge and bluebirds will arrive, because they feed on each other."

While out in the bitterbrush patch, Givot shushed everyone, and said, "Listen! Do you hear that...?" Silence settled over the hubbub of students talking to students, and everyone could hear the calls of a bird chattering away in the ponderosa pines around them. "Those are pygmy nuthatches," she said. "I wonder how they affect the health of bitterbrush."

Perhaps, with that question, a team of her students may be caught up in her curiosity, and be looking for a way to spend Saturdays watching nuthatches and bitterbrush. Such a project could - with a great deal of hard work, dedication and scientific questioning - lead to a college scholarship.