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2019 Update: Flowering phenology in experimental plots

            Each year, we assess flowering phenology in experimental plots to determine mating potential for individual plants and see how a number of factors may affect flowering phenology. Some of the factors we have investigated in the past include heritability, burning, and climate.

2019 was truly a special year for Echinacea flowering phenology in experimental plots. There were flowering plants in four – yes FOUR – experimental plots. We had the usual flowering plants in exPt1 and exPt2 at Hegg Lake. We also had a flowering plant in exPt8 (qgen2 and qgen3) and exPt9 at Hegg Lake. Unfortunately, we did not see the flowering plant with an E. pallida dam at exPt9 until late in the season, so we did not take phenology in exPt9.

This Echinacea head is mid-flowering. It has more than 2 rows shedding pollen and more than 11 immature florets.

This year, we visited the three other plots and followed the usual Echinacea phenology protocol. We recorded first flowering day and subsequently recorded dates of “mid” and “late” flowering. Finally, we recorded the final flowering date of each plant.

In addition to the single flowering plants in exPt8 and exPt9, exPt1 had 63 flowering heads we tracked for phenology and exPt2 had a whopping 1207! The first flowering head in exPt1 started on July 3rd, while the first head in exPt2 started flowering on July 1st. The last day of flowering in exPt1 and exPt2 was August 21st. What a long summer of taking phenology data!

Start year: 2005

Location: exPt1, exPt2, Heritability of fitness-qGen2 & qGen3, exPt9

Overlaps with: Heritability of flowering timecommon garden experimentphenology in the remnants

Data/ materials collected: phenology data (start date, mid flowering, end date, etc…), harvested heads for the ACE protocol. All phenology data can be found in the cgData repository in the subfolder p1p2Phenology.

Products: Jack Schill’s externship project (jack-schill-climate-and-phenology-report), multiple publications

Past team members who worked on this project: Jennifer Ison, Will Reed, Amy Waananen

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