As the season nears its end, the seasonal members of the Echinacea Project have all returned to school. This week, Grace flew back to California to start her junior year at UC Santa Cruz, leaving only a lone juggling ball for us to remember her by. Now only me (Maddie DiMarco) and Maddie Sadler remain as interns to conclude the field season. With measuring done in the experimental plots and (almost) all demo sites finished, our main focus is harvesting. We spent the first few days of the week harvesting whenever possible, filling up several bags with harvested echinacea heads. Soon, they will all be ready for cleaning and counting of achenes.
A monarch nectaring on thistleOne of the goats, which we have named DirtA leopard frog at ExPt02, who was not as fast as I am
However, we cannot harvest in the rain, and this week had lots and lots of rain. While we are trapped inside, Maddie and I have been working with our data, ensuring that there are no missing, duplicate, or incorrect records. During a break in the rain, I also trekked out to exPt01 to revisit some of the plants we needed to check.
Massive Chicken-of-the-WoodsA secret mushroom spotFound en route to exPt01
The rain has brought us many boones. Mushrooms were plentiful, found near the goat paddocks and the experimental plots, including a magnificent Chicken of the Woods. We have also seen our first salamanders of the season. Two eastern tiger salamanders were spotted on the roads—we shuttled them to safety. You can tell by my face how excited I was.
Me, clearly having the best moment of my lifeTiger salamander #1Tiger salamander #2 with Maddie and I
Since Wednesday, we have continued our progress on total demos. We completed sites KJ, railroad crossing, and around landfill, demoing over 350 plant locations. We also surveyed dozens of flowering echinacea, cataloging their flowering heads and precise locations.
While total demo continues on, today is also full of lasts—we have completed measuring in exPt08! While we experienced quite a rain delay (and a sky-cracking lightning strike somewhere on the property), the team braved the mist, 90% humidity, and the very wet grass to complete our final row of measuring in exPt08 this morning. Harvest lists are compiled and ready to go, meaning we can move on to monitoring the echinacea heads and harvesting them when their seeds are ready. After the achenes are harvested, they will be dried and brought back to the Chicago Botanic Garden, where we will determine the number of achenes produced and seed viability. This gives us insight on the fitness of the plants in the qGen2 and qGen3 cohorts.
Aaron and a Canadian toadA visiting Monarch in exPt01Maddie and her most recent frog friend
We are also saying goodbye to Gael, one of our high school interns. We will remember Gael for his hard work, singing during tasks, and tripping into badger holes in the field. While we are very sad to see him go, Gael is starting his first year at University of Minnesota Morris, where he is studying chemistry.
Gael, operating the GPS during total demoGael on a visit to the sunflower fields near a field site
The Echinacea Project, and its principal investigator Stuart Wagenius, is responsible for the foundation of one of the most comprehensive and long-running studies of prairie plants. Experimental plots use a common garden design and include experiments involving inbreeding, aphid addition and exclusion, flowering phenology, pollen addition and exclusion, and more. The Echinacea angustifolia in experimental plot 1 were planted as far back as 1996; while they have experienced mortality over the years, many of these plants are still alive. Team Echinacea, most of which are younger than the plants we work with, have been hard at work collecting measurements to add to the ever-expanding dataset. We take data on things like the number of rosettes, leaves, and flowering heads a plant has, as well as insect activity and disease spread, to help determine the fitness of the plants in various treatments.
A common wood-nymph being thwarted by our pollinator-exclusion bagsAn Agapostemon virescens visiting echinacea in ExPt01A fungus commonly found growing in ExPt01A jumping spider on the hunt, likely preying on floral visitorsDragonflies, abundant in ExPt08Aaron, having a standoff with a grasshopper
As of August 1, 2025, we have measured approximately 60% of experimental plot 1, which has over 11,000 planted positions. Having accomplished so much, we plan on beginning harvesting soon next week. After the heads are harvested, the achenes will be sent to the Chicago Botanic garden, where interns and volunteers will work to determine the flowers’ seed set. Throughout the rest of the field season, Team Echinacea will continue measuring in ExPt01, and begin on ExPt08, ExPt09, ExPt07, and ExPt02.
This is a map of measuring progress in ExPt01, where the blue segments have been completed and the white, unfilled sections are soon to be measured. We measure by experiment, concluding one before we move to another. We have completed the inbreeding 1 cohort, the inbreeding 2 cohort, and the first generation of the heritability of fitness experiment. Currently, we are working on the 99 main garden, a series of rows planted by Stuart in 1999.
New members of team Echinacea! This week, we moved in our newest members—goats. The goats assist in weed removal. These animals are particularly good at removing the persistent and invasive buckthorn from patches around Hjelm. They’re also great for team morale. We have also had some time with Gretel and Stuart’s dog (Blue) and cat (Teenie).
Demography and surveying Echinacea angustifolia is a long-lived perennial, but we are unsure how long they actually live. To track individual plant lifespans, we “demo” every season. This marks the 30th year of demography data for the Echinacea Project! This week, we have made good headway demo-ing and surveying the remnant prairie field sites. As a team, we have taken demography on over 300 plants in the past two days. Our high school and REU students practiced their echinacea spotting, visor usage, and GPS skills.
Pollinator projects REU interns Grace and Kyra have solidified their experimental design on their pollinator mark and recapture project. We used nets and vials to capture local honey bees as practice before we move on to bee populations in the remnants. To mark them, we placed the bees in our constructed “bee plungers”, easing them to the top of a mesh-covered tube, where we could them use paint marks to place tiny dots on their abdomens. The order and color of these dots will allow Grace and Kyra to keep track of each individual bee that they capture throughout the project.
We visited the sites East Elk Lake Road and KJ’s . Both sites were small, bordering on either mowed private property or agricultural fields. We hypothesize that neither site has been burned recently, because there was remnants of old plant matter and the presence of fairly large trees and scrubs. For legumes, there was veiny peas, but no clover. For cold grass, there was brome and porcupine grass, and for warm, there was big blue grass. Otherwise, there were yellow asters and prairie roses.
KJ’s was extremely small, wedged between the road and the tree line, and was probably too small the ever consider planting. There was also a large animal den/hole and turkeys near the road at KJ’s. We also found an old flag at KJ’s, possibly demarking an old transect. In terms of legumes, we found clover, veiny pea, and alfalfa. For cold growing grass, there was lots of brome on the roadsides. However, there was not a lot of big blue grass for warm growing grass. There was also poison ivy, prairie roses, milkweed, and thistle.
EELR had many round bulbs on the plant matter, we hypothesize that these are wasp galls of some sort. EELR was much larger, with a higher diversity of plants, and likely was preserved because it was too steep to plow. Between the two sites, there was a fair number of trees, many of them pine, especially at KJ’s. There was evidence of significant animal activity, including a section of flattened grass where an animal, probably a deer, bedded down for the night, bordering on one of the segments at EELR.
Matted section of grass at the fourth segment of transect 131 at EELRFound flag at KJ’s along the eastern section, near the two tract roadTurkeys seen on the side of the road at KJ’sGall found on woody plant in many sections of EELR
I am a post-baccalaureate research intern with the Echinacea Project and will be moving between the University of Minnesota and the Chicago Botanic Garden. I graduated in May 2025 from the University of South Carolina with a degree in Environmental Science and Biology. My research with the Echinacea Project will be focused on the experimental plots.
Pronouns: she/her
Research Interests
I’m interested in all sorts of plant ecology. I especially am interested in plant-pollinator interactions and fire ecology. I hope to learn more about conservation and restoration efforts in prairie ecosystems.
Statement
I am from New Jersey and went to college in South Carolina. In college, I was a researcher for a plant/insect ecology lab and I studied abroad in Ecuador’s capital city, Quito, and the Galapagos Islands. I did my honors thesis on the effects of humidity on the attachment strength of mucilaginous seeds, a seed trait found all across the world. I am a fan of all sorts of creatures and often pause to take pictures of everything. I like to read, bake, nap, and catch lizards.
