Yippee, my first BUDS blog post!!
Hi, my name is Tess, and I am a rising 3rd-year undergrad in the lab! This summer, I am completing an REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) at Blandy Experimental Farm, mentored by Ethan Skuches!
The summer started with a road trip to Alabama and Georgia, where I helped Ethan take blackgum leaf samples using a forestry slingshot (look at the photos, it's wild). Those leaves will be used for future DNA extraction to understand the relationships between wild blackgum across its range and their genetic relationship to urban individuals. We started with the Paint Rock ForestGeo and Preserve sites, then ended our journey with a few city parks in Atlanta (check out the Alageorgiabama 2026 post to learn more!).
After a whirlwind of leaf collections, I arrived in Boyce, Virginia, at the State Arboretum (aka Blandy)! Over the course of my 10 weeks here, Ethan and I are investigating the drought tolerance of a Blackgum cultivar, ‘Wildfire’, which is commonly used as a street tree. Because the trees are genetic clones, we expect them to fail at similar times under the same stress conditions. In the next couple of weeks, we will see how our droughted trees respond and whether they recover after being rewatered. We hope to then study climate trends to see when droughts like the ones simulated are expected to occur in various cities along the East Coast!
Ethan and I also took a quick jaunt up to Baltimore and New York, where we collected more blackgum leaves (yes, the rumors are true - we used the slingshot in NYC) from the northern part of the species’s range. Along the way, I got to explore The Preserve at Vassar and helped survey one of their plots!
Back at Blandy, you can catch me in the greenhouse taking physiological leaf measurements, watering our much happier 3 controls, or wandering about Blandy trying to identify trees!
