Alex and I started my last day off with going to Hegg to do some total demo!!! Alex and I headed out and started our journey. We got out there and started to get some points where the echinachea is thanks to Darwin (the gps). We were just about to start when I realized we forgot our visors. So we were like “Oh Kennedy can get them on her way here after practice”. But sadly practice was running late and she wouldn’t get there early enough. So I headed back to Hjelm to retrieve our visors. By the time I got back to Hegg Alex mapped a good majority of the sight. A little while later Kennedy arrived just in time as we started!!! We finished in no time and brought the picnic table up onto the porch for lunch.
We got cake on our last day! Thanks to Mia! I cut the cake and of course Kennedy had to give me a little trouble on how I was cutting it! Well to be fair it’s hard to cut a cake into five pieces! After lunch we headed out to P1. We were working on rechecks!! It took a good amount of the afternoon and we ended up finding lots of mushrooms out there! AND THE SECOND SMALLEST MUSHROOM IN THE WORLD!!!
After we continued P1 we headed up to clean out our bags and say our goodbyes. Goodbye Team Echinachea!!! I’m going to miss all of you so much!!! Want to know what I learned over the summer, is that you never full appreciate something until you have to say goodbye. The team taught me well, and i’m glad I was there to be a part of it.
Just as any normal day starts at team echinacea most of the team headed to p2 to do some more phenology!!!! As always we accomplished quite a bit! The crew worked fast and got it done just in time for lunch!
The Sun Rays!
Working Hard!
John being recorded and a helicopter in the sky.
We ate and chatted a little bit about everything as usual! After lunch we split up and headed to p8 and continued measuring the rest of the field. My group and I forgot to fill out one of the largest row we had in our visor and the rest of the team thought there was just one big long row to do, but luckily we surprised them saying we finished it all!!! Kinda cool I know!
Finished measuring p8!
After we headed back Stuart got root beer floats ready and we all cooled off after a long but another successful day of research!
The day started off by everyone (except Stuart) meeting up at Stevens Approach instead of Hejlm. Everyone went to help Maris collect bees!!!!! Maris put us into groups and gave everyone a walkthrough of what to expect when we see a bee on a echinacea plant! She did a really great job at it!!! Everyone practiced with the bees already pollinating at Stevens Approach! I was grouped up with Maria and Allie! We headed to Golf Course, NNWLF, and NWLF, we found two bees at NNWLF and two bees at South of Golf Course!!! I named one bee “Lime” and Allie named one of the bees “Savanna”!!!
Laura and “Lime”LIME!!!!!!Allie and “Savanna”
Much of the other crew found bees as well!!! After we looked at the remnants we headed to Staffenson to search for more bees! Sadly we didn’t find too much there.
By the end of the morning a total of 20 bees were found! Lunch came fast!!! After lunch presentations were given by Wesley, Maris, Mia, and Miyauna!! Stuart also talked to us about how his presentation went!! HE DID GREAT!!!! After lunch we all worked on our individual projects, I started working on Project Milkweed!!!! I finally got some maps today and started the journey!!! I started off by going to Stevens Approach to go to one of the blue and orange flags to check at the point if milkweed was present within a 1 meter radius and a 2 meter radius! There was a TONNNN in this remnants. After I finished all the points and counting how many were in each radius I headed over to South of Golf Course, Golf Course, East Elk Lake Road, KJ’s, NNWLF, and NWLF! I finished quite a bit but I got quite a lot done!!!
Today was quite a busy day! The team split up and took a crew over to P2 (that’s where I was) to start phenology on the flowering plants in the field.
P2 Field Flagged
The plants phenology contained information such as where it was(row and position), a twist tie color to mark individual heads to help separate them when we study, and if the plant was flowering or not(if it was flowering the first, second, and mid day fields were filled). Most of the plants were flagged with a red flag and labeled. The afternoon came fast and lunch began. Stuart talked with us to make sure that everyone knew more safety and talked about who wants to present for projects.
Laura and WesleyS.T.I.P.A.S. Selfie
After lunch another group (super terrific incredible people association squad AKA S.T.I.P.A.S.) went out to do a stipa search in certain remnants. The squad went out for the rest of the afternoon and we went to, Hegg, Loefflers Corner, and Yellow Orchid Hill. We went to each random point that we needed and checked a meter around each point to see if any stipa was growing. If it was we would record, collect, and bag it up.
I got to the Hejlm house and looked at the goats and decided to name one “Douglas”!!!
Alex with Douglas the Goat
Flagging the Echinacea
Prairie Turnip
Mountain Death Camas
Mountain Death Camas
The first part of the morning started off by gathering the materials needed to flag and to record data on each echinacea plant in the remnants areas. We gathered red and neon flags, zip ties, our visors, metal tags, and our flag bags. We headed out to the remnants area and listened to Jared explain to our small group on how to walk and things to look out for when we were walking around. The group and I were searching for more echinacea plants and flagging them with red flags on the North side of each plant and leaning the flag to the East. we found 44 on the East side.
After each echinacea plant was flagged the team ended up going into partners, I was with John today and we entered in data about each plant we found into our visors and recorded many characteristics and data about each one. After we then finished with a plant we changed the red flag with a neon flag marking that data was collected. After all the plants were recorded we went over to the West side. We did the same process but didn’t have enough time to finish so we just searched and added the red flags around the plot at each echinacea we found. Some interesting observations we found were “Prairie Turnips” (the green fuzzy plant) and the “Mountain Death Camas” (the white small flowering plant). The Mountain Death Camas plant is actually poisonous so luckily none of us took a chop out of that one!!!!
After the small group got back we unpacked, cleaned up and started on lunch! After lunch we listened to a presentation from Leah explaining her project she has been working on for a couple years. She talked about the phenology of the plants and some things she was going to do to sample to see the synchrony of the plants and their timings from this year compared to previous years. After we listened to Amy discuss dust, the climate change, and how it is very similar to pollen. Most of this project was just an idea and everyone tried to ask questions and give ideas to help straighten the dust idea out! Overall it will be very interesting to see how dust could effect the plants and pollen. She also wanted to sprinkle more dust on plants and less on others. After this we did some team bonding and grouped up answering questions and discussing ideas. We then went over some quick chores we each will have to help practice and keep the team in a safe environment! We did a few more tags and called it a day as some thunderstorms started to roll in!!!
