As a part of our research looking into the role fire plays on plant reproduction and population dynamics, we collected geospatial and flowering data on Liatris aspera at 22 prairie remnants in and near Solem Township, MN. Six of these remnants burned in spring of 2021. During the growing season, we collected data on the position, inflorescence count, and number of flowering heads for over 2400 individuals (exact number is unknown still because some individuals were shot twice with the GPS due to calibration errors).
We also randomly selected 234 Liatris as focal plants, which we harvested once they had gone to seed and brought back to the lab for cleaning. We hope to be able to use the inflorescences we collected to quantify seed set and compare density effects between burned and unburned remnants.
Over the summer, Team Echinacea spent 5955 minutes (99 person-hours) shooting Liatris GPS points and 2235 minutes (37 person-hours) harvesting the focal Liatris plants.
Collecting data on a small Liatris
- Start year: 2021
- Location: 22 prairie remnant sites in and around Solem Township, MN
- Overlaps with: Liatris insects on flowering heads
- Data collected: All data related to this experiment can be found at ~Dropbox/burnRems/remLiatris
- Samples or specimens collected: We harvested inflorescences from 234 individuals to be cleaned in the lab.
- Products: Stay tuned!
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