Today was the first day that we went out to do phenology at all the remnants, p1, and p2. The weather was really nice, the first day all week that we have seen the sun for more than a brief moment. We saw lots of flowering Echinacea, and since the weather was so warm (and had been so cold) we saw lots of pollinators! I saw one plant with two bees on it at once while Ashley and I visited our Aanenson remnant.
Two tiny pollinators!
We finished phenology before lunch and after lunch Tracie and I went to Staffanson to GPS the new flowering plants that Gretel and Anna found this morning, we also found a couple new flowering plants. Alex went out solo with the GPS to survey the points for the yellow pan traps and Lea’s vegetation surveys. The rest of the team worked in p1 verifying positions of flowering Echinacea and the positions of plants that will be used in the Aphid exclusion and addition experiment that has been going on for several years.
Team Echinacea had a busy Saturday doing various things. I drove back from St. Paul, MN. I was there for a friends birthday. Wes saved the St. Olaf band camp with the magic of his tuba. Other members of the team did laundry in Alexandria and went out to eat at Mi Mexico (conveniently located 50 meters from the laundromat).
Some members did actual work also! Lea found the locations where yellow pan traps, which are used to sample pollinators, were placed in 2004. She plans to use these sites along with some others for her study on community composition along roadsides. Alex is also going to be using those locations to put out yellow pan traps again this summer, he plans to compare pollinators caught this summer to those caught in 2004.
Today was our first day off since we started, I spent the day reading and drinking coffee at home in Alexandria, the rainy afternoon made it less desirable to partake in outdoor activities.
As for the rest of Team Echinacea, the world may never know what they did on their first Saturday at Andes Tower Hills, but Kensington Runestone days are this weekend and there were city wide garage sales that some members of the team planned to visit and search for treasures, maybe some miscellaneous viking artifacts. I will let them post about their exciting finds.
Today was the first day in the field for Team Echinacea 2017, and it couldn’t have been a better day! This weekend was hot, humid, and stormy in MN. Today was much cooler with a pleasant breeze all day. We started the morning with introductions and learning about safety and general Echinacea info. We learned about all of the dangerous plants and animals in our study site. The worst by far must have been death camas which you shouldn’t eat because it will kill you. After learning about safety we headed out to Staffanson Prairie Preserve to see some of the native (and non-native) plants that we will see during the summer. We spent the majority of the morning meandering around Staffanson pointing out new plants and discussing the history of the land, and then headed in for lunch.
We assessed everyone’s various skill sets at lunch so that we could form the Ultimate Team Echinacea by building on eachother’s strengths and skills.
Hegg lake WMA was our second stop of the day where we discussed the differences in the plant communities within the site and between the site and Staffanson. We then said our good-byes for the evening.
Today started off with Amy and Scott going to collect phenological data on Lea’s plants at Staffanson. Jame and I went to Hegg Lake to check on some discrepancies between a list of GPS points and observed points in Amy Dykstra’s plot. After we finished at Hegg lake and Staffanson we met at Loeffler’s corner for some demo. While Sulu (one of the GRS-1 units) was being uncooperative and had to take a timeout we made it by with just Chekov (the other GRS-1 unit) for awhile. Stuart returned from his trip home to Illinois today, and he arrived just in time to help us do total demo at Loeffler’s Corner. We focused on the west side of the site because it has a history of being burned and can give us an idea of how burning affects flowering in remnant populations! We completed total demo at Loeffler’s corner which involved visiting exactly 500 locations. It felt good to finish demo at a big site, especially after spending so much time doing demo at Staffanson, which is where we will be tomorrow, so stay tuned!
P.S. if you are curious about the title it is a quote from Scott after crossing a barbed wire fence with just millimeters to spare, for more great quotes from Scott stop by tomorrow!
Jame waits for Sulu to start working
Jame planned an Echinacea themed party, he even decorated with lots of colored flags! But no one came : ( (Just kidding he is doing demo)
Today was probably the coldest day of fieldwork we have had all summer, a cold front passed through on Wednesday and left us with a cloudy 60 degree day. For those team members who are more accustomed to hotter summers today was a little bit of a shock.
We went out to do total demography at Staffanson Praire Preserve, our goal while doing total demo is to census all of the plants that have flowered sometime in the last 20 years. It’s a big project, at Staffanson alone there are just over one thousand locations to visit. While not all of these locations still have a plant it is awesome to see a tag around a plant that was put there in 1996 or 1997.
Even the flowers are cold!
We made a huge dent in the number of locations at Staffanson, of the 1054 locations we visited 435, nearly half done!
Scott stakes locations while Amy does demography on the plants at each location
I’m sitting in Greater Fort Lauderdale/Broward County Convention Center, taking a break from hearing about all the great work people from all over the place have been doing. I thought that this was a good time to update you on how my poster presentation went (Mostly because the convention center has free wifi and our hotel doesn’t. What?! how can it be 2016 and there not be free wifi…)!
I arrived in lovely* Fort Lauderdale Sunday afternoon, this is the first conference I have been to and It is a little overwhelming but also super exciting! I presented my poster on “The heritability of flowering time and duration in Echinacea angustifolia” last night (Monday). Lots of people stopped by and it was really fun getting to explain all of the work I had done over the past year to them. The poster session lasted for 2 hours but it felt like 15 minutes.
Amy is here with me and she is going to be presenting her poster on Thursday night!
*Lovely – 90 percent humidity and 90 degrees
Below is a link to a PDF of my poster for closer inspection!
So much happened today- Steve Ellis, a local beekeper/bee-hero came to talk to us about the work he has done advocating for bees. He has been apart of several lawsuits that aim to stop neonicotinoids from harming his bees and bees around the country! He talked about how the chemical insecticide harms the bees and affects colony survival. Along with Steve, we got some really fantastic scones.
After Steve left we ventured into the bog to pull buck thorn from Alyson’s project. There was a lot of buck thorn and I’m sure we missed some but we would have felt bad if we hadn’t left any for the goats. We piled all the buck thorn near the ’99 south garden for a bonfire. The pile was probably at least two Abbys tall or about 12 feet. Post-buck thorn we headed in for an early lunch.
P2 rechecks after lunch, which went really fast. We were finished by about 2 and then we headed home to prepare our dishes for the potluck/bonfire party. (I brought a “multi-berry” pie, though it was more of an aggregate pie). The food at the potluck was great and we had a lot of fun chatting in the screened porch away from the mosquitoes. The party was 90 percent potluck and 10 percent bonfire, which was a good ratio.
Today was the best day of the summer for me, not only did we have a great presentation from Steve Ellis and great food, but! The man, the myth, the legend: Danny Hanson came up from Lakeville to visit! I’m so excited that we will both be at the University of Minnesota in the fall.
Hello flog! Comin’ at you live from Maple Grove. I am currently sitting in Amy’s basement following a rousing evening of music, fun, and friends. We drove to the Cities today in a torrential downpour to see a concert this evening of Dr. Dog featuring Shakey Graves. Before the concert we got to know each other better by playing ‘Would You Rather?: Provocative Questions to Get Teenagers Talking.’ The questions truly were provocative but some members of the group were still game: as Alyson said, “I’m a teenager and I’m ready to get provocative.” Many of the questions presented difficult choices, but we added a third alternative, having clams for hands, which proved to be a surprisingly popular option. After that we drove to the concert and we all had a great time! Here’s a story from the evening. I was just dancing around and all of a sudden this darn thing grazes my head, I look around like ‘what the heck, man’ and it’s a rice crispie bar! I smelled it first and then I ate it. After that we danced more.
Here’s the aforementioned rice crispie bar mid-eating
Following the concert we went and ate ice cream. I got lemon custard and so did everyone else. It was an accident. I also got a Izzy (TM) scoop of raspberry sorbet. Yum.
We did phenology in the remnants and the experimental plots this morning. I think we are already past peak flowering! *sigh* It goes by so fast. In the afternoon, most of us went to P2 to do some weeding and phenologizing. Other team members caught pollinators and worked on doing crosses.
I have been looking forward to today all week, however, not because of fieldwork, but because it was wing nite at Angelina’s Restaurant in Alexandria. Many members of Team Echinacea came and ate a lot of wings, including James, who ate 4lbs of wings all by himself! James reports feeling really good about himself afterwards. Evidence below:
James “Clean Plate Club” Eckhardt
I had to take my leftovers home in a styrofoam box. In other news, Scott met his baby doppleganger at the restaurant! See picture below:
Present Scott (in foreground, at left) and Past Scott (in background, at right)
I will leave you with a video that encapsulates our dining experience:
