“I love PBORY”

“I love PBORY” – exclaimed Lea as we headed out to learn the total demo protocol. PBORY is the acronym for the order we place flags at the locations of plants that we collect demographic data at. First a gps operator finds the plants using coordinates from previous years, they then place a flag at the location. The color of said flag is dictated by the number of the location they are at. If the location number ends in 1 the the operator puts down a pink flag, a 2 gets a blue flag, 3 gets orange, 4 gets red, and 5 gets yellow, hence PBORY. The acronym helps the team keep the locations straight and get the correct demographic info for each location. The demographers follow the gps operator and collect info at each of the locations.

All of the data we are collecting contributes to the over 20 year long demographic census of Echinacea angustifolia. Some plants have been alive the entire time!

Today we did total demo at our “south of golf course” remnant population which is new to much of the team since we are not collecting phenological data from that population.

We found lots of plants that were still alive from 10 or more years ago, some were even completely surrounded by poison ivy.