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While much of Team Echinacea 2016 has returned to school (with Gretel, Hattie, and Roxy being our most recent members to say goodbye) the few of us remaining have decided it’s still time for some summer fun. So, today we started the day by sleeping in, eating various homemade breakfasts, and relaxing a bit more. As the morning chill burned off and the sun came out, we decided on a plan. The main activity of the day? Visiting the Douglas County Fair! We headed out in the early afternoon. Take a look at a few of the things we saw!
 Each building had many interesting art pieces and exhibits. But what does this one mean?  The kids whose work is shown above may be talented photographers, but what is all this Echinacea purpurea doing in a Douglas County Fair photo contest? Echinacea angustifolia is actually native to Douglas County, unlike Echinacea purpurea!  Scott takes time to enjoy the Minnesota DNR building that is filled with exhibits on wildlife of the region. After the four of us explored this exhibit, we all spun the pollinator wheel and won posters after answering questions about native pollinators!  Here you see James and Amy depicted in this modern piece, “Sweet Corn is Summer”  James and Lea think real hard about what part of the goat the “poll” might be- they struggle less with “teat”.  Amy and Lea shown here as part of a performance art piece. “Just keep swimming with 4H” explores the roles of two young women accidentally caught in the current of the local big bass, 4H.
After our fun day at the fair, we shopped for our weekly groceries and drove back to Kensington. The weather today was truly fair, and the fair was truly wonderful- the perfect end to a great week!
Efficiency and good data are two of our major goals at the Echinacea Project. Today we achieved the efficiency part, and hopefully while we were efficient we collected some good data. We started off the day with seedling refinds in big batch. After our work today, there are only fifteen more segments, and we’ll have hopefully found all the surviving plants in P1. Scott calculated we have somewhere around a 0.675 % chance of no rain, however we realized our luck was quickly running out. We decided to head away from the rain to the east and attempt to do total demography at East of Town Hall, however as soon as we put the GPS together it began raining. After eight plants, we called it quits and headed back for some computer work. I was able to finish my code for easily calculating how far a plant is away from a habitat edge.
Lunch was eaten in cold silence with a few sparse comments on how 68 degrees shouldn’t and usually doesn’t feel so cold. Roxy lighted the mood by taking out her squirrel jerky, which she had been saving for her last full day in Minnesota. This prompted comments as to why someone would eat something that has been dead that long. Stuart didn’t know why, but he in turn wondered why people would drink kombucha. This elicited discontented mumblings from our resident kombucha lovers. I’m still in the dark as to what exactly kombucha is, but I know it’s alive and I generally don’t like to drink live things.
In the afternoon we completed demography of East of Town Hall, Nessman, Bill Tom’s Gate, Landfill and Around Landfill. Sadly we learned that today was Gretel’s last day. We had so little warning of this that Will compared it to ripping of a bandaid: painful and quick. We eventually had to say goodbye to Gretel, Hattie and Roxy. I’m still unsure of how we’ll sync the visors without Gretel, but we’ll have to manage. I hate to leave you on that sad note, but I must.
The refs are reviewing the stake files. Looks like they’ll be delaying the demo due to rain.
Good afternoon floggers! As far as progress goes, we are moving along steadily on cleaning and counting. I have randomized about 180 samples of achenes and I have finished rechecking the three trays of randomized achenes. We are on the 9th bag of Echinacea heads that need to be cleaned. In other news from the lab, the REU students have completed their research and are presenting their scientific posters today. We have had lots of interesting information and studies to read about over the past few days! Today will be my last day volunteering in the lab. I am off to University of Michigan to complete my undergraduate degree in Environmental Sciences. The opportunity to volunteer in the lab this summer has been truly unbelievable. I have learned so much, not only from staff members, but also from the incredible volunteers who kept me company. I am so grateful to have been given this job and I would like to thank everyone who made this summer internship unforgettable. This is Ivy Klee signing off! Goodbye and good luck with the rest of project Echinacea!
Hi Flog,
It’s great to be back in Minnesota after a muggy and fun week at ESA in Ft. Lauderdale. On Thursday, I presented my poster, “Two temporal scales of reproduction affect mating opportunity in long-lived perennials.” The poster was displaying work that I did this past year looking at the 11-year phenology dataset we have from the individuals in p1. The question I tried to answer, basically, was whether it flowering on a high-flowering day or in a a high-flowering year was more important for an individual’s number of opportunities to mate. For example, this year is a low-flowering year in p1, whereas last year was a high-flowering year. Would it be better to flower on the population’s peak date of flowering this year or to have flowered off peak last year? It turns out that in this system, the year is more important relative to the day. I think this is because all flowering within a season is synchronous enough that most individuals don’t totally miss out on opportunities to mate, even if they are early or late flowering. I still have some work left to do on my analysis, but it was super helpful to hear what questions people had and get some useful insights as well!
 Here’s me with my poster
Here’s a link to my poster if you want to take a closer look!
I’ll get to the topic presented in the title, but first I’ll give you a quick recap of our day in The Birthplace of America. Laura left this morning (the unearthly hours of the morning), and we will miss her and her stick shift driving skillz. We spent the morning relaxing. I cheered on USA in the Olympics, specifically in sailing. I promise it’s more interesting than it sounds.
As you can tell, there wasn’t going to be much of note to write about today. Until we experienced an enlightening dinner conversation, I was going to tell you about fridge phenology. Yes, with only four Echinacea still flowering we are missing it. But that was before our local expert on fiber, Lea, began what was to be a life changing conversation.
Lea suggested that eating the recommended daily fiber intake was nigh impossible, so I looked up my daily suggested fiber intake. You too can do this on the USDA website. It recommended I eat 38 grams of fiber a day. It was not until later I realized how much this was. Helpfully, the USDA also suggested that I have over 50 grams of protein a day and very surpr
isingly suggested I have 0 grams of arsenic in my diet. Being the curious budding scientists we are, we played a game called guess the amount of fiber a vegetable contains. We were having braised leeks for dinner, so we quickly found out that your average 89 gram leek contains only 1.6 grams of fiber. If you do the math, I would have to eat over 23 leeks a day to satiate my fiber needs. You must be thinking, “Wait, there must be a better way to get my fiber.” I’m sorry to say after searching the fiber content for over 5 vegetables (a massive sample size if you would like my opinion), nothing had a great amount of fiber. An average medium size potato (213 grams to be precise), contains 4.7 grams of fiber while a large potato (369 grams) contains 8 grams of fiber. That is, as Scott would say, some basic math. This seemed like a lot to me until I realized I would have to eat over eight potatoes a day to satisfy my needs. That’s 1722 grams of potatoes or, for those of you who like the imperial system of measurement, 3.7 lbs of potatoes a day. We now arrive at the conundrum of our discussion of nutrition. How does one eat 23 leeks in a day and still manage to eat enough protein? We tried to discover this secret of nutrition, but then realized we would be better off just eating some ice cream and ending our day on a high note.
A local sunflower patch
Friends,
We’re drawing down here, folks. Today, we drove the team from the Hjelm House to work at Steven’s Approach in a single car. There, we did seedling searches, checking 18 focal plants for some of their old seedlings. There was a bit of confusion (and internal screaming) since tags there are replaced so often, and plants are mowed on the reg, but we finished by 11:30, and thankfully will have mostly easier sites remaining for seedling refinds. Yes, there were cucumbers at lunch.
In the afternoon, we hit cruise control, finishing total demography North of the Golf Course in just an hour. It turns out that the demography records at this site actually included plants from Liatris Hill, a site I haven’t visited before that we’ve mostly ignored so far this year. Man, what a pretty place it was, blanketed with sunflowers and cordgrass with leaves five feet tall, hidden from view of the roadside by a line of conifers and a hill slope. There were no flowering plants there, but several Echinacea basal plants are still alive and kicking. After finishing NGC, we returned to P1 to recheck some of the “can’t finds” from our exhaustive measuring there. We got a considerable proportion of the replants done, covering hundreds of meters and uncovering several hidden Echinacea basal plants, narrowly avoiding losing our meter sticks. Just as the aphids are slowly leaving P1, some corners of the plot are slowly being settled by paper wasps. Future re-checkers and harvesters beware.
 The team breezes through total demo at North of Golf Course without a sweat (note: that last part is not true) After work we enjoyed watermelon slices on the porch of the Hjelm House, while Roxy enjoyed eating (mostly begging for) our rinds. We enjoyed these with our hands, mouths and faces. This was in part a celebration of our new sexy bright yellow GPS-pole, which James will lovingly nurture and employ tomorrow shooting points for his independent project (see picture). For dinner in Kensington, we tried our lot as Russian peasants, eating borscht and a home-baked loaf of bread for dinner. Yes, there was ice cream. We finished the evening with invigorating games of hearts, where James won one game and Lea won another by shooting the moon. Hmm, that’s funny, I can’t remember who came in last — there must not have been a loser.
Sweet baby (and) James Finally, shout out to Laura “Puff Daddy” Leventhal, whose last day of work is tomorrow before she heads back to Akron for a wedding and school. It was fun working with Laura, who always had good jokes or propositions for odds, let us look at her burgeoning wisdom teeth at the dinner table more than once, and was generally cool in other ways. She will be writing the last in her series of hilarious and topical flog posts tomorrow. Bye, Laura!
Where is the category for “team members sleeping”?
Today was the last day for the aphids on the team. As Scott did a final assessment of all of the aphid addition and exclusion plants, he noticed many of our aphid team members were coming to the end of their season. Alas, Team Echinacea 2016 says good by to our little aphid friends, wrapping up an exciting season of aphid addition and exclusion!
In addition to working with the aphids, Laura and I finished up phenology on the remnants while James GPS’d the edges of a few more sites. I also took a look at all the plants I’m monitoring for flowering phenology at Staffanson. Most of the Liatris aspera on the east unit have started flowering, but Solidago speciosa is yet to begin. I also saw a flowering Prenanthes.
 Flowering Liatris aspera Flowering Prenanthes After lunch, we worked out at p1, searching for “can’t finds” and staples. The thunder started about 3:15 and we wrapped up early. Back at town hall, James made an amazing dinner of fresh tomato and vegetable sauce with polenta AND pasta. We ate a particularly ripe watermelon from our CSA, and I made a blueberry cobbler with all of the remaining blueberries left behind at town hall.
Blueberry cobbler, YUM
We are down in numbers this week. Leah, Alyson, Alex, and Jennifer headed back to Ohio last week, and Amy and Will are in Florida for the ESA meeting this week.
Even with the low numbers we’ve been very productive these past two days. On Monday, we did phenology on the few plants that are still flowering. Then people split off and worked on individual projects and aphid treatments. Ruth Shaw and Margaret Kuchenreuther, a biology professor from Univ. MN Morris, came in for lunch.After lunch we headed out to Loeffler’s Corner to do some (former) seedling refinds.
This morning, we all split up to accomplish a lot. Scott and I finished up the aphid treatments from yesterday, Laura rechecked her project plant positions, Lea went out to Staffanson to put more plants into her project form, and James GPSed some more edges. Laura and Scott also found time to measure P6. At lunch, we had a delicious chocolate cake from Gretel and Hattie. YUM! After lunch we did full demo at Tower and South of Golf Course. We headed straight to Elk Lake after work to cool down and have fun!
Unfortunately, today was my last day with Team Echinacea. Thanks for a summer full of fun, learning, and prairies!
 Teamwork makes the dream work.  Scott searches for a tag during demo.  Yay! We’ve found a tag! Saying goodbye to Roxy was the hardest. 🙁
Hi Flog!
I’m sitting in Greater Fort Lauderdale/Broward County Convention Center, taking a break from hearing about all the great work people from all over the place have been doing. I thought that this was a good time to update you on how my poster presentation went (Mostly because the convention center has free wifi and our hotel doesn’t. What?! how can it be 2016 and there not be free wifi…)!
I arrived in lovely* Fort Lauderdale Sunday afternoon, this is the first conference I have been to and It is a little overwhelming but also super exciting! I presented my poster on “The heritability of flowering time and duration in Echinacea angustifolia” last night (Monday). Lots of people stopped by and it was really fun getting to explain all of the work I had done over the past year to them. The poster session lasted for 2 hours but it felt like 15 minutes.
Amy is here with me and she is going to be presenting her poster on Thursday night!
*Lovely – 90 percent humidity and 90 degrees
Below is a link to a PDF of my poster for closer inspection!
esaposter_willreedvf-1-1-1
Hello floggy friends!
This morning, Leah and I left Town Hall to embark on a crazy road trip to Michigan. As we were driving, other members of Team Echinacea participated in the FlekkeFest 5k and witnessed history at the International Vinegar Museum. I’ve only been gone for about 14 hours, but I already miss everyone so much. To pass the time during our car trip, Leah and I shared fun stories from the summer.
Other notable moments from our trip include:
- Witnessing a “noutfit” or what others would call a “neon outfit”
- License plates from 16 different states
- Stopping at Taco Bell more than once
- Listening to “Too Good” only once and “Cold Water” four times (contrary to popular belief by members of Town Hall)
Great roommates must think alike, because as Leah was posting about what members of Team Echinacea taught us, I wanted to share what we taught Team Echinacea during our two months in Minnesota. I’d say we taught them a few valuable life lessons:
- Sometimes you just need to stop and look at all those mushrooms
- If you don’t listen to Drake or Justin Bieber during a car ride, you’re doing it wrong
- If a picture is worth 1000 words, an emoji must be worth so much more
- Not only does singing to aphids get the job done (thanks Abby for that tip), but singing to pollinators and basal plants in experimental plots also does the trick
- Anyone can learn how to cook, but it’s not a good meal unless you add at least 3 different kinds of cheese
- Prairies are pretty cool, but bogs might be better (minus the buckthorn and mosquitoes)
- Dance parties are acceptable at any time of day
- You shouldn’t settle for anything less than perfect (namely the perfect meter stick or fork size)
- Embrace being silly and awkward, because the people mind don’t matter and the people who matter don’t mind.
Finally, I’d just like to thank everyone for all the support and guidance they’ve given me this summer. I’ll never forget this amazing group of people and I can’t wait to see how everyone else’s projects go and I can’t wait to keep snapchatting everyone (*nudge nudge Town Hall fam I’m talking about you).
Catch ya on the flippity flop,
Alyson
 Peace out, Kensington! Ps- Thanks Scott for taking this adorable pic and seeing us off this morning (at the insane hour of 6am)
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