Abby VanKempen « The Echinacea Project

July 16th: Another Day of No Phenology

This morning Gretel took us all down to P1, and we learned the proper way to collect pollen from plants and put it onto other plants. After getting to practice that ourselves, we split into small groups and went to do various jobs. Everybody agrees that Gina and Will got the best job. They went out to Hegg Lake and got to cut off all the Echinacea pallida heads. Now we have a beautiful bouquet of them on our lunch table! Per and I got to bag flower heads in P1 that will potentially be used in the cross-pollination experiment.

Amy is excited to bag heads at landfill!

After lunch, a group of us got sent out to Hegg Lake to help Taylor flag the rest of her hybrid plot. We found lots of little Echinacea plants and measured all their leaves.

Done flagging the hybrid plot!

July 9th: The Day of No Phenology

Today I arrived at the Hjelm House and was greeted by this little guy.

A tree frog waiting to say hello to everyone!

This morning was the first in forever that we didn’t do phenology! Tomorrow we get to spend the whole day doing phenology at ALL of the sites! Amy and I got to adventure out this morning to GPS at a lot of sites. There were only a few points at each, so it went smooth and quick. Gina and Danny did the same, and now we are done GPSing! That means for our big phenology day tomorrow, we will get to use accurate maps at every site! Woohoo! The rest of the flower children worked out in P1 for the morning. They flagged and twist tied the remaining flowering plants.

At lunchtime, Amy and Brad Dykstra stopped in on their way home from checking on one of Amy’s plots in South Dakota.

We spent the afternoon in P1 doing a review of all the plants. We want to make sure the row, position, and twist ties match the other phenology records.

Hattie found a little bud hiding near the base that needed to be twist tied!

July 2nd: Phenology, GPS, and P2.

We started off this beautiful morning by going out in groups of 2 or 3 people to do phenology and mark points with the GPS. We get faster and more efficient at this everyday. Kevin Kotts from the MN Dept. of Natural Resources came and talked to us at lunch. He told us about his work restoring and conserving grasslands and wetlands in west central Minnesota. We learned a lot! After lunch, some people went out to mark more points with the GPS and the majority of us went out to P2 to continue flagging and twist tying flowering plants. We worked hard until late afternoon, and then called it a day.

This plant at Hegg Lake has 13 flowering heads!

Hattie helped us flag and twist tie at P2 today!

First Impression: East Riley

On Thursday, I took a field trip out to E. Riley. My first impression was that it

was a very small prairie. It’s a rectangular plot about 50m by 15m. One of the

long sides is bordered by a corn field and the other, a gravel road. There wasn’t

much evidence of it being a native prairie. I think they must have dug out the

ditch in order to build the road. I saw lots of Echinacea angustifolia. In fact,

there were over 100 heads along the 50 meters. The most common flowering

plants were the prairie rose and alfalfa. There weren’t any trees in the remnant,

but I saw and heard some bird flying overhead. I also saw a gopher standing on

the road for awhile. Overall, it was a cute prairie that surprised me with it’s large number of echinacea.

Categories

Experiments

July 16th: Another Day of No Phenology

July 9th: The Day of No Phenology

July 2nd: Phenology, GPS, and P2.

First Impression: East Riley

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