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Well, thought I’d just say that I am safely back in Washington after a nice long drive. We were slowed down by a flat from a nail and a screw stuck in my tire, at least one of which was probably picked up in Minnesota. Other than that, thanks for the great summer and good luck in school or whatever else you may be doing. Jennifer and I finally got to talk to one of the naked Finnish men on Lake Isaac and we obtained a few words of wisdom. The most important piece, which I think I ought to share, is that “taking a sauna with a swimsuit on is like kissing through a screen door.” That explains so much.
Here’s a quick tally of the demography data that we took in the natural remnants this summer. I think we did a lot! We took a total of 5027 records. Here they are broken down by loc status…
This is just the first rough pass through the dataset. There is a lot of clean-up to do and mysteries to figure out. For example, of the 81 “good loc, diff tag no” records, 12 have no loc and 1 has no tag (gulp).
Flowering rates seemed to be high this year. 1700 records list one or more normal flowering heads and another 223 records had only non-normal heads. There were some big plants too: two plants had 11 flowering heads and two had ten! The greatest number of rosettes was 47 (that’s good ol’ plant #1540 at NGC.) We counted 9276 total rosettes.
The summer field season is done for me. We drove back to Illinois on Saturday. I’ll try to post reviews of the datasets occasionally and maybe some photos too.
Jennifer is the only one still in the field. She is harvesting seedheads today & tomorrow, then returning to IL.
Per requests, here’s the recipe:
1/2 c butter
1 c sugar
1 egg
1/3 c molasses
2.25 c flour
2 t baking soda
1 t cinnamon
3/4 t cloves
3/4 t ginger
1/4 t salt
That’s it. Usual method – cream butter with sugar, add egg and molasses, then dry stuff. Recipe says bake at 375 for 10 min, but Thomas advises 350 for a little less time to keep them softer.
It was fun feasting on cookies – these, Julie’s and Jean’s – with you all on Thurs after our soaking morning!
Today was the last day of a great field season. We finished the the demography census of flowering plants. We surveyed all sites that needed it. We refound the last of the seedlings that we mapped this spring. And we organized our gear and put it away.
Here’s a photo of Ian, Rachel, and Amy sorting flags…
The heavy equipment in the photo was used to fill in the 2m deep trench that ran through the yard and driveway for the past few days. In the past few weeks, moving the new “storage shed”/office and the associated construction and landscaping has introduced additional chaos into our fun-filled field activities!
I’m heading back to IL tomorrow (oops, Saturday is already today). I’ll keep you posted with summaries of datasets as they come out and I hope to add some more photos to the flog. It’s been a great summer. Thanks to everyone for all your great work!
Georgiana May and I had a great day working with Amy M., Gretel, Ian, Jennifer, Julie, Rachel and Stuart. Though we had specially chosen Thursday as having the most promising weather, it was raining when we arrived at 9, but that didn’t stop us from piling into the truck for the trip out to the beautiful prairie remnant at Krusemark’s where we relocated previous flowering plants and collected demographic data on them. The water resistant paper kept the maps from thoroughly shredding, and we finished the job – but not before 1. Back at the farmhouse, water had been restored (after a break the night before) AND there were 3! batches of cookies – great reward!! After lunch, Gretel and Jennifer visited several remnants to relocate seedlings we marked in May. Amy, Rachel, Georgiana and I did the same at E. Riley – it was satisfying to see even just a few survivors! Stuart, Julie and Ian surveyed at Riley and E. Riley. All this, under beautiful, warm sunshine – what a difference a few hours makes! Georgiana and I enjoyed a look at Staffanson and Hegg Lake on our way out back to the TC’s. It was a great summer working with all of you!! My best wishes to all of you. Ruth
Hi Team,
I am safely installed back at home. The unpacking and laundry is done, and Costa Rica prep is in full swing. To those of you still in the field, I wish you steady hands on the surveying poles and expeditious dispatching of the demo maps. And to everybody, I wish happiness and good luck in life. It’s been fun.
Take care, Amy
Despite delays on the runway in Chicago due to rain and a well planned air show I did make it home. I apologize for the delay in posting, I’ve had a busy few days. Unpacking, doing laundry then immediately repacking takes it out of me. I hope that your final week(s) are as fun as the previous 9. I will continue to either blog or mass email about things that may or may not concern Echinacea.
A note: After looking at my mom’s purpurea I’m very glad that we study angustifolia. There are about six billion rosettes and heads on each plant.
Here’s a map (pdf format) of plants in the common garden. A purple asterisk indicates a plant that flowered this year. The size of the asterisk is proportional to the number of heads produced. Download file
We harvested a lot of heads today & yesterday. It’s early for us to be harvesting.
KAP: KAP has not gone so well this summer. We went out to Staffenson last week, in an attempt to at least get a pretty picture to show for our troubles. The idea was also to get before/after photos of the liatris (liatrises? liatri?) blooming. We set up a 10m x 10m square near the boundary between East and West. Alas, due to unstable winds and our failure to bring more than one memory card, we weren’t able to take too many pics. And, of those we did take, we only had one (ONE!) with three groundmarkers included and none (NONE!) with all four groundmarkers.
Today we went out again and, despite promising wind predictions, failed to get the camera up.
Team Bee: Amy is analyzing data
Team Video: Due to an encouraging article on BBC about time travel, Colin has decided to wait for this invention rather than watch the 1000 hours right now. He plans on sending back his future self to do the grunt work. Thus, when all video is reviewed, we will know that time travel has been perfected.
Team FA: Leaves and heads, done.
Demography: Going well. Gaining in speed and efficiency. However, many, many sites are left to do. Getting nervous about the end of the summer coming so soon.
Common Garden: FINISHED! Well, just harvesting left.
Hegg Lake: Rechecks c. 1/3 done
Rachel’s Sites: Almost done!
The most recent Echinacea project paper was recently published in Biometrika. I posted the pdf reprint on the Echinacea resources webpage. Here’s the citation:
Geyer, C., S. Wagenius, and R.G. Shaw. 2007. Aster models for life history analysis. Biometrika 94: 415-426; doi:10.1093/biomet/asm030.
You can find all the Echinacea project papers on the resource page. For convenience here are direct links to three key papers about pollination:
Wagenius, S., E. Lonsdorf, and C. Neuhauser. 2007. Patch aging and the S-Allee effect: breeding system effects on the demographic response of plants to habitat fragmentation. American Naturalist 169:383-397.
Wagenius, S. 2006. Scale dependence of reproductive failure in fragmented Echinacea populations. Ecology 87:931-941.
Wagenius, S. 2004. Style persistence, pollen limitation, and seed set in the common prairie plant Echinacea angustifolia (Asteraceae). International Journal of Plant Sciences 165:595-603.
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