Plot 2 and Plot 8, Phenology and Measuring

Hello Flog readers,

Today Team Echinacea took on some daunting tasks. We started the morning in P2 where we continued making phenology records, searching for heads of Echinacea Angustifolia and tagging them with twist ties. The visor entries were continuous, and the number of flowering plants was quite impressive. In some rows there was a plant every meter with at least three heads, many were even flowering. Folks, we are in flowering season!

This picture doesn’t do it justice, but the number of flags that we have gone through in order to mark the budding plants is remarkable

& we can’t forget the dog Misty that we saw on our way back to base.

With some spare time in our day, we made a small dent in Stipa rechecks out in P1. We paired up and did our best to search for Stipa that hadn’t been flagged or identified already. Drake and I found a Stipa plant with 12 culms today and we had to make records of the many missing fruits because it’s seed dropping time for Stipa and let me tell ya, finding one in your sock is not very pleasant. After lunch, let’s just say that the sun was making itself known, but there was measuring to be done in P8. So off went team Echinacea (2019), down the gravel road and into P8, ready to crouch down in the tall grass and hunt for some toothpicks. That’s right, we are toothpick hunters, tall grass, green ash, and thick duff has nothing on us. Not only did we find a ton of seedlings but we also got to measure them to add to the records of their growth. Amy even found a FLOWERING ECHINACEA PLANT, IN P8!! Very exciting!