This week has been full of demography and clearing a plot to plant seeds from the crossing experiment that took place this summer. We’ve been busy lopping, chain sawing, weed whipping and painting stumps with roundup in order to make way for the incoming prairie. Demography is almost done, just one site left to hit up for our first sweep through.
This afternoon while Stuart was busy trapping gophers Lydia and I spent the afternoon harvesting heads from the crossing experiment, we were on our second to last head when we encountered a curious situation. We were at the correct row and position and just could not find the plant that we had visited so many times this summer. We did however find a small hole in the ground near where an Echinacea plant should be. We pondered what to do, then Lydia finally exclaimed “I’m going to go-for-it”! Then she put her face to the ground, peered in and shouted “I see a mesh bag!!” Then in a flurry she reached down inside the hole and pulled out an already harvested Echinacea head….
…the gophers must have read the protocol because they seemed to know to leave 3 centimeters worth of stem from the base of the head.
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