Today was a day full of demo. Everyone headed out to East Riley in the morning while Lea went to take data on her floral resource plots along roadsides. East Riley might not be the most exciting remnant for demo at this point in the summer, as most of the “flowering” plants we were finding were designated with an M1 or an M2 or even an M5… meaning we were just finding mowed heads that perhaps once had great potential. All of the mowing also seemed to make tons of small basal rosettes pop up, so our visor forms were reaching their max with nearby neighbors. At one point in the afternoon when we were finishing up East Riley, Lea staked around 20 plants within a .5 x .5 meter area. And there were tiny Echinacea everywhere! It was quite a puzzle.
Anna with some high density PBORY at East Riley.
Many small basal Echinacea plants and lots of locs at East Riley.
Lea and I also spent some time back at Staffanson today working on our neighborhood richness vegetation project (aka RichHood). We got through 5 of our 2 x 2 meter plots today, so we are making progress! 8/100, only 92 to go! We are pretty sure our plots at Staffanson will take the longest since there is such high diversity, and therefore a lot of plants we have to spend time figuring out. It’s really fun work though.
To finish off the day we did flowering demo at Yellow Orchid Hill and KJ’s, two nice roadside remnants. When we were staking the plants at Yellow Orchid Hill, the GPS went to float for a bit. However, calling on the space weather gods seemed to work quite well. In the few seconds after me calling out to them, the GPS went from Auto to Fixed! Then, we got to hang out among the sunflowers at KJ’s before heading back to the Hjelm House.
Anna, Lea, and Ashley hanging out in the sunflowers across from KJ’s!
Until next time, flog!
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