The lab received funding from the California Conservation Genomics Project (https://www.ccgproject.org/) to sequence full genomes from 100 California poppy individuals collected from across the state. Some of the sampled individuals were grown from seed collected by Liz in 2019, but to get to the full 100 individuals we planned to do a collecting road trip. When Covid-19 forced Liz to avoid traveling, she got creative and harnessed the power of citizen scientists to help collect her samples. A request for help through the California Native Plant Society’s Facebook Group yielded many botanists across the state willing to help. Liz has been hard at work in the lab extracting DNA, and looks forward to sending the samples off for sequencing soon. She’s looking forward to delving into the data, to see the degree of genetic differentiation in California poppy across the state.
The California Poppy Project
