Trevor here! Today, me and Nina began our journey to clean the achenes of our respective species. I worked on my Liatris and Solidago species whilst Nina continued work on the echinacea species. A task of mental endurance, we did take a lunch break and another break to take bio photos on the green deck, which you can find on our introduction posts.
This is a picture displaying the echinacea bud (upper) and the respective achenes that Nina cleaned from the bud (lower). Nina admits that some of the buds were quite “stubborn” and she has to individually pluck each achene, which is not preferable. Nina prefers when the buds “behave themselves.”
My buds are much less stubborn and the achenes easily fall off. In fact, my buds actually look quite different from the echinacea achenes, resembling a miniature version of the capitulum often emitted from dandelions, making them quite fun to work with! Pictured to the right, these are the achenes I separated into baggies for future x-raying (notice the formation!)
Either way, Nina and I are extremely excited to begin our projects and continue cleaning first thing tomorrow! More updates to follow!
– Trevor
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