We are making progress on the 2012 harvest. Today, volunteers Lois and Susan are extracting achenes from Echinaea heads and placing them in envelopes. For this batch of heads, we are trying out a protocol of saving any leftover plant dust in separate envelopes.
We also have a lot to finish from the 2011 harvest. On Friday we started counting achenes from an experiment that examines the effects of burning on offspring fitness. Each plant came from a mother that was either burned or unburned the year before germination.
In other news, we have a new member of the lab. Marie is a sophomore from Carleton College and is taking advantage of her winter break to gain some research experience. This month she will be processing some of the heads from Kelly’s Kapsar’s project on flowering phenology. Today, Stuart taught her how to extract achenes.
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