Kate and I travelled to Great Sand Dunes (GSD) National Park in Colorado for a Helianthus petiolaris collecting trip this September (14th to 19th).  We collected seed (and in most cases, leaf tissue) from ten established sites and five new populations.  As it was my first trip to Colorado, I took far too many photos, some of which can be seen here:

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=B79C2AEC8577A993!335&authkey=!AI-lThucM2QshUY&ithint=folder%2cJPG

Old populations sampled: 1270, 2061, 2001, 1363, 1791, 1731, 1701, 1300, 2250, and 970.

New populations with coordinates: 12300 (37.738N, 105.539W); 12350 (37.724N, 105.718W); 12400 (37.98893N, 105.79224W); 12450 (37.90641N, 105.65016W); and 12500 (35.52187N, 105.60063W)

As an interesting aside, we noticed that in general, herbivory was much more of an issue for the plants in the sand sheet and edge populations compared to core dune populations. Deer, elk, and insects were the most obvious culprits on the sand sheet, birds were more conspicuous predators in edge zones, and core dune plants exhibited little sign of seed predation at all.

Two photos of each site can be seen below, but many more are available via the link above (look for captions with site numbers).

Kasey Moran

P.S. Thanks to Kate for taking the time to introduce me to this enchanting system!