There’s no such thing as an ordinary day during the summer for Team Echinacea but today was particularly exciting because we accomplished many different small (but highly necessary) tasks. We started the day sending 4 people out to do phenology in the remnants, p1, and p2. This took us around 30 minutes because there are now less than 20 flowering heads. Out of a total 4293 flowering heads in the places that we’ve been doing phenology only about 0.4% of the heads are still flowering. During phenology part of the team cut down the sumac and pulled thistle in the ’99 south plot. After that the team split in two and half of us organized g3 (picture tomorrow, it looks great!), and the other half dug up bird’s foot trefoil near p1 on the road. Amy GPS-ed a couple more points that still needed GPS-ing while Abby and Gina continued to tame aphids.
Amy and Stuart hard at work
During the afternoon, Hegg Lake was the place to be with gallium being harvested and data taken on thistles. Will, Ali, and Danny did some top quality film work trying to get a measuring protocol video. We also placed 3 RFID capsules at one of our less stable sites to see if they’ll survive the winter. Stuart not only got the demography protocol good to go for the rest of us, he also made it readable on all devices! Finally, and perhaps just as important as the rest, Erica (Ricky/Eric/Ricardo) got much bigger over the weekend! It’s a great start to what will be a productive week.
Erica looks about as big as my finger!
