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July 30: Video Tapes and horse rides!

This morning started off beautifully with slightly slower winds than yesterday, perfect for crossing Q3 plants. The team crossed all the Staffanson and Landfill plants before lunch! I was tasked with capturing video for an instructional video on how to cross pollenate plants so that future team members could view the procedures at any time. I had a lot of fun documenting each member of Team Echinacea pollenating various plants across the experimental plot. In the afternoon Stuart again tasked Taylor and me with working on a short video documenting the correct way to flag, tag, and twist tie a new plant in the field.

Making Taylor's dream of being a an actress come true!

Making Taylor’s dream of being a an actress come true!

 

After Taylor and I completed the filming for the flag, tag, and twist tie video Abby, Gina, and I headed over to Hegg Lake where I was able to test out the vacuum harvester I am borrowing from the DNR, I was also able to think about my experimental design and figure out what needed to be done.

After Work the team got cleaned up at home and headed to Matt’s house for some kebabs and a bonfire. Matt was gracious enough to allow us to ride his horses and gave us lots of vegetables from his garden. For most of us this was our first time riding a horse which was very exciting!

MAJESTIC!

MAJESTIC!

July 29: Special visit from local beekeeper Steve Ellis

We started off today with freshly baked scones and a visit from Steve Ellis, a local beekeeper. Steve is currently involved in a court case, Ellis vs. EPA, which seeks to increase regulation on the use of pesticides, especially neonicotinoids, when used in areas where bees forage. He told us about how neonicotinoids are nearly ubiquitous in today’s agricultural system, coated on corn, soybean, and many other crops. These are systemic pesticides which means that the chemicals are taken up by all parts of the plant. Anything that eats the plant—including the pollen that the plant produces—is exposed to the chemicals. Although they are basically safe for humans, they cause mortality to bees in high dosages. Even more troubling, though, is that they frequently have sublethal effects on bees even at very low concentrations. This can compromise their ability to forage, overwinter, effectively provide pollination, and reproduce. Steve emphasized that there is a lot that we don’t know about the effects of neonicotinoids, such as their long-term effects in the ecosystem. Steve is very active as an advocate for bee health, spending much of his time talking to legislators and people like us to spread the word about what is happening to bees. He told us that one of the most important things that we can do are to buy organic food, which will reduce both our own and the bees’ exposure to chemicals.

Local beekeeper and activist Steve Ellis visited this morning

Local beekeeper and activist Steve Ellis visited this morning

We finished up some phenology before lunch. It was too windy here (gusting up to 40 mph) to do crosses for the q3 experiment, so instead we did more phenology (less to do tomorrow!) and sent teams out with the GPS units to make sure the maps we are using include all of our plants. Tomorrow we will hopefully be able to do a lot of crossing. We will also do some more GPS surveying and work on independent projects.

 

July 28- Morning on the porch, thistles, and crossing

Today started on the porch. We gathered at the table and talked about the tasks at hand. The first order of business involved organizing the mapped GPS data. Maps of all the remnants needed to be checked for missing GPS points and tag errors. Next up was an R Lesson. I loved learning the basics of loading/correcting data and executing a basic statistical test. After the morning lesson, we headed out to do a bit of GPS-ing and phenology at a few remnant sites, then gathered on the porch again for lunch.

After lunch, we started by pulling invasive thistles out of p1. After walking all the rows, we pulled 117 thistles in total! The two most impressive pulls were giant roadside plants seen below.

Matt's huge thistle!

Matt’s huge thistle!

Danny's bouquet

Danny’s bouquet

 

 

After the thistles were pulled, we moved on to hand crossing heads for Q3. On the way out to cross, I noticed some flowering grasses!

 

 

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Staffanson pollen was organized and put into insulating styrofoam containers that correspond to each data sheet. We worked consistently until all 28 data sheets were complete, and all heads crossed.

 

 

Crossing is almost done!

Crossing is almost done!

Stuart passes out pollen.

Stuart passes out pollen.

27 July 2015: Pure phenology and watermelon

We started the day with phenology in all of the remnants as well as p2. It’s quite apparent that we’re past peak within the remnants and many of the big sites have more flowers that are done than still flowering. It’s an exciting time to be an Echinacea because the styles have shriveled and the achenes will be forming soon.

An early afternoon meeting

An early afternoon meeting

We spent the afternoon finishing the crosses between the landfill sires and dams in p1 and then wrapped up with watermelon! Stuart, Danny, and Will had a watermelon seed spitting contest and Stuart’s rapid fire technique left all of us wondering where the seeds had went. In the end Stuart was victorious, spitting it roughly 4-5 meters and impressing us all.

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Roxie is excited about the watermelon!

initial aphid dataset for discussion about statistics

Here it is:
aphid1.csv

July 26: Sunday Adventures in Alex

With three of us out of town, and Danny occupied with his girlfriend Lauren’s visit, it was a pretty quiet weekend at the town hall. After a particularly lazy Saturday, Lea, Taylor, Gina and I decided on Sunday morning to spend the day in Alex. First we went to Art in the Park, which was a much bigger event than I had imagined! We listened to live music, ate free samples, and admired the work of local artists (some of which featured Echinacea!) For lunch, we went to Mi Mexico, which was yummy despite the fact that I ordered the most boring item on the menu. (I guess I didn’t realize that a bean burrito would literally just be beans in a tortilla…oh well.) After lunch, we stopped at an antique shop and spent hours getting lost in the labyrinth of shelves and rooms until we were told that the store was closing and we had better check out. We made one last stop at the grocery store, and then returned to the town hall with our wallets slightly emptier but happy to have made the most of our day off.

Spotted this beauty at Art in the Park!

Spotted this beauty at Art in the Park!

July 25th: Amazing Aphids

On Friday, Gina and I didn’t have time to do our aphid treatments, so we decided to meet on Saturday morning. We collected aphids from around P1 and added 2-3 to each of our 50 addition plants. Then, we checked over all 50 of our exclusion plants to make sure those sneaky aphids weren’t trying to start a colony. So far, only 4 addition plants have started aphid colonies, but Gina and I learn more and more everyday about aphid tending. Sometimes we talk to them while moving them to their new plant homes. They seem to appreciate and enjoy this. The treatments went really quickly and we finished in about an hour.

Friday July 24th

Friday was a phull phun day of pure phenology! We visited all the remnant sites, P1, and p2. As the summer slips away from us, so does the flowering Echinacea. Though phenology has been taking less time it serves as a sad reminder that summer is beginning to wind down. After all the phenology was completed, we all worked out in P1 on crosses for the Q3 experiment. Some of us also peaked on some of the crosses from the previous day, curious to see whether our crossing technique has been effective. When we see shriveled styles on heads that we have crossed, and those styles are not associated with bracts that are painted white to denote that they may have been pollinated before we designated them as part of the Q3 project. It was exciting to see how it has been working, and we’ve been seeing some preliminary shriveling on what we crossed! After work, most of the team (minus Gretel, Stuart, and Matt) headed back to town hall Lea made yummy guacamole and a group made some homemade chips! At the end of the day we went to Abby’s house and watched McFarland projected at her outdoor theater! It was a very full, and very fun day.

July 23: Phenology and Cross-pollinating

The days and weeks are starting to fly by as we get into the busy part of the summer. Nearing the end of July, it seems like we’re hovering right around the peak of the flowering season for Echinacea angustifolia. In addition to keeping up with the phenology for our flowers (roughly a couple thousand across our remnants alone!), we’re also making timely progress on independent projects and getting important work done on the q3 experiment.

We got off to a quick start this morning sending half the crew out to do phenology at a handful of sites while Danny and Amy continued their work assessing compatibility across remnant flowers and still a few others collected pollen at Staffanson for q3. While phenology is proving to be quite the time commitment right now, we’re slowly (and satisfyingly) starting to be able to check the “Done flowering” box for more and more of our flowers. The flowering season is tapering off much faster than I had expected!

A cross-pollinator's eye view of a well-organized team carrying out crosses in p1.

A cross-pollinator’s eye view of a well-organized team carrying out crosses in p1.

The bright and breezy afternoon had most of the team out in p1 doing pollen crosses for q3. Stuart debuted a new system for keeping us organized in the field as we share, swap, switch, and track down the right vials of sire pollen to be applied to the p1 dams. While the fits of wind that persisted for much of the afternoon were a nice way to cool down, it was not very much appreciated when the breeze swept away the valuable bits of pollen we were trying to apply to our flowers!

The day ended with a visit from some of the parents of the crew members and local science teachers (these two groups actually had quite a bit of overlap). These visits were timed excellently for our guests to appreciate the Echinacea in all their peak flowering glory.

Bagged and painted Echinacea ready to be cross-pollinated.

Bagged and painted Echinacea ready to be cross-pollinated.

July 22: Taylor Day!

Today is Taylor’s Birthday! Today she turned 19 years old. Gretel made a wonderful chocolate cake with caramel in the middle for Taylor which we got to eat at lunch when we all sang Happy Birthday to Taylor. Later Taylor made us all some delicious fish tacos for dinner (she wished to cook on her birthday) and we celebrated with another homemade cake!

Taylor and her first cake of the day!

Taylor and her first cake of the day!

 

Taylor’s birthday was the most important part of the day but we did do some work today. In the morning Will and I went out to Staffanson to collect pollen for the Q3 experiment. In the afternoon much of the team did cross pollenation of Landfill plants for the Q3 experiment. I worked on clearing P1 of any Birdsfoot Trefoil. I was able to extract nine plants from the experimental plot, each of them witha large taproot.

The newest member of Team Echinacea

The newest member of Team Echinacea

 

Yesterday I made lots of headway on my independent project! I met with Jason Strege from the DNR to discuss mechanical methods of seed collection. Jason also brought along this beauty. It was bought by the DNR to be tested as a vaccum collection method. In the comming weeks I will be doing some testing with different nozzle sizes to attain the optimal settings for seed collection.