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Hi flog!
Today Team Echinacea met at the garden for a day full of exciting meetings and orientation. I got in around 8 to start learning my way around the Plant Science Center, and then Gretel, Stuart, Lea, Kristen, and I met to recap the summer and talk about goals for the fall. We started planning our trips back to Minnesota to finish up field work and burn a few of the experimental plots. Before lunch, we got demonstrations by a few of the volunteers of the ACE protocol, including how to clean Echinacea heads, count achenes, and randomize achenes.
After lunch we continued meeting to discuss project ideas and talk about our weekly schedules. We’re all pretty ambitious with our ideas and goals for the fall, but Stuart believes it’s possible. Can’t wait to get started!
Tracie
Today was a busy day for the three of us: Kristen, Alex and I. But we got a lot done! I spent the morning at Staffanson working on Lea’s Liatris and Solidago phenology/harvest while Kristen and Alex did total demo at East of Town Hall. Later they shot a few extra plants at On 27 while I started remnant harvest. I only got through about half of the sites before heading back to the Hjelm House to meet up for lunch. We took a quick lunch and then got back at it. I finished up remnant harvest and then we started a few sling sites. Even with some GPS trouble, we got through seedling searches at KJ’s, NWLF, and ETH.
 Looking for seedlings at KJs.
Today was another chilly day at the Echinacea Project with highs reaching up into the low 60ºs. Tracie and I spent the morning working on harvesting Lea’s Aster Phenology at SPP. Many of the Liatris are finished flowering and ready for harvest, but some of the Solidago plants still have at least another month or two before they will be ready.
 Prenanthes racemosa In the afternoon we spent our time out at Stephen’s Approach working on more seedling refinds. Between Tracie and I, and later also Stuart and Alex it took us about 3 hours to complete 13 focal plants. This is one of the more challenging activities that we do at the Echinacea Project, however, the glory of finding one of last year’s plastic swords or toothpicks is immeasurable.
 Actual seedling refinds map found today. Luckily another map was found for the same site with the correct seedling locations.
Today Lea and the doggies left early in the morning to head back to Chicago. Kristen and I got up a bit later and decided to head for the cities. This was only my second time there, and Kristen’s first! We drove to Grand Ave in St. Paul and walked around looking at all the restaurants and shops there. We ate at a place called Colossal Cafe where we got some fancy grilled cheeses and portobello sandwiches. Once we finished up there, we went to the U to look around.
On our drive back to Andes we talked about how everything we were seeing used to be prairie. Kristen painted a nice picture of how it would have looked without all the trees and roads. After a day saying “uffdah!” so we could feel like we fit in, this was a circumstance for the ultimate uffdah. Would have been cool to see prairie for miles and miles.
Minneapolis, MN
Today was another relaxed Saturday. Each of us at Andes had a number of errands to run including the very important task of getting the doggies groomed and cleaned before heading back to Evanston! Lea took the doggies in to Bark n Bubble in town for an all over spa treatment.
Later in the evening Lea, Tracie, and I celebrated Lea’s last day by enjoying some wine and having a ladies night in.
Today was maybe the best weather day of the summer in my opinion, a nice breeze all day and just below 70 degrees. We took full advantage of the great weather and went to our Landfill remnant to finish doing total demo. We only did total demo on part of the site but, we still visited 687 previously flowering Echinacea and even found some never before seen individuals!
It didn’t take long to finish demo at the Landfill, so we did some miscellaneous jobs for the rest of the morning. In the afternoon we went to Hegg Lake WMA to find any remaining individuals of the treasonous Echinacea pallida. We found three pallida and quickly relieved them of their heads. One of the individuals we found appeared to have aster yellows, a disease that affects many species in the Aster family including E. angustifolia and E. pallida. It is possible that pallida, a non-native, could outcompete the native variety (hence the decapitation to prevent the spreading of achenes). So it is good to know that like our much loved Echinacea angustifolia, Echinacea pallida can get sick too!
 An E. pallida with what appears to be a case of aster yellows.
Yesterday was my last day with the Echinacea Project and on Tuesday, I presented what I worked on this summer. Using R Studio, Google Earth, and Soil Web, I learned a lot about programming and soil in general. After plotting the plant points on Google Earth, I found 9 different soil codes in 8 sites. The most common type was BaC2 with 51% of the plants followed by LeF with 20%. These two soils were both classified as well-drained and have slopes or hills. However, the horizon of the main series of soil they are each made up of is quite different. I included my powerpoint with some of the information I found. Soil is a very large topic, so I am hoping to continue learning!
I had a blast this summer learning and working with everyone! Thanks again!!
soil types in Echinacea
P.S. Plexipus and Angustus both transformed into beautiful butterflies!:)
Flog post for August 29th, 2017.
This morning we broke into two teams to do flowering demography at three sites. The team I was on went to Around Landfill. Normally the cows at Around Landfill stay unseen in a different part of their pasture, but today a few of them cam right up to the fence. Maybe they were telling us to stay away from their calves? We combed the site for any Echinacea that had flowered that previous year, and while we’ve been visiting the site often to collect phenology data, we still managed to find a few previously missed flowers. Both groups converged on the On 27 site after an hour or two and collaborated to sort through the sumac and uncover the Echinacea there.
After lunch, the majority of the team went to harvest Echinacea heads and Bouteloua grass. The county has recently been cutting roadsides in preparation for winter, so we thought we had to act fast to snap up the Bouteloua seed. As it turns out, the mower didn’t reach us yesterday, but we still managed to gather another gallon of seed to spread on P1 after the fall burn.
In an effort to spice up head harvest, we tried to communicate the head I.D.s via the NATO phonetic alphabet. We decided at one point to make some more creative changes to the typical code.
A-Alpha
B- Bravo
C-Charlie
D-Dingo
E-Echo (echo, echo, echo)
F-Foxtrot
G-Gopher
H-Haute
I-Indigo
J-Joey
K-Kangaroo
L-Linda
M-Mancy
N-Norbert
O-Oscar
P-Papa
Q-Quebec (said in a heavy Irish Accent)
R-Roscoe
S-Shwifty
T-Tango
U-Uniform
V-victor
W-whiskey
X-Xylophone or Xray (depending on how confused you are on the spelling of Xylophone)
Y-Yankee
Z-Zulu (or Xylophone, don’t judge us on our spelling).
I think this adapted version is far superior to the current version, and NATO needs to update it stat.
We finished the day with a cookout at Elk Lake. The Andes crew supplied chocolate cake and some CSA veggies, and Stuart supplied vegetables from the garden and cooked. The lake was absolutely beautiful, and everyone went home happy and full of food.
Today was my last day of work with the Echinacea Project. We spent all of it doing total demo at Landfill and it was great! We had beautiful weather and many flowering individuals to investigate. In the morning the manager of the landfill came and talked with Stuart for a bit about the project and the remnants at the landfill. At lunch I gave the group a little presentation on my project for the summer. After another afternoon of total demo the Andes crew went into Alexandria for a night of wings.
 Stuart pointing out where Echinacea are at Landfill for total demo. Tracie, Anna, and Kristen doing total demo at Landfill. My project this summer had several aspects to it. In the first part, I was curious to look into the plant community diversity between various types of land based on their land use history. At Hegg Lake Waterfowl Production Area there are remnants, restorations, and abandoned agricultural fields. I conducted vegetative analysis on several areas with these land use histories and I will be analyzing that data in the next couple weeks. Along with vegetative analysis, I also collected data on flowering resources between each type of land as a measure of pollinator habitat quality. Another aspect of my project was to build a list of species whose populations were large enough to collect seed from without heavily damaging the population. I built this list and gave it to the local DNR for their use. Along with the seed collection list, I am currently putting together a species list for all known species at Hegg Lake to provide for the DNR.
I learned a ton this summer and I am so happy to have had this amazing opportunity to participate in ecological science. There is so much fantastic research and good science coming out of the Echinacea Project. Thanks for everything!
-Wes
So, today is the first day of my last week and also my last flog!:( This summer has been super fun and educational! I’ve had the opportunity to meet so many awesome people and learn a lot about the area I live in!
However, today was also the official last day of phenology! The last plant was at Steven’s approach and Lea had the honor of double checking its status as done flowering. This morning we worked on demo and seedling searches at Loeffler’s corner. In this particular area, someone decided to dump a bunch of woodchips and not just in one spot, no no spread out. This made it slightly depressing since there were a number of points totally covered by wood. Despite this challenge, plenty of flowering plants were still found! After lunch, the team also worked on demo.
Tracie, Alex, and Wes working on demo It’s crazy how fast this summer went and I already start school in a week! I’m looking forward to my senior year and finalizing my college decision. Wish me luck!
Thanks again to everyone on the Echinacea Project Team!
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