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 Leah just wishes that bees would land on a flower and not on her camera Laura and Leah had already started their day much earlier than the rest of us to wipe the pollinators that they caught yesterday in p2 on flowers in p1 for Laura’s independent project. When the rest of the team arrived at the Hjelm House, pollinators were out and about, so most of the team went out for pollinator observations. Other members of the team worked on assessing compatibility and used the GPS. From what I gathered from stories at lunch and messages in a certain group chat, the team saw some pretty interesting things, including a mysterious rodent. After observations, team members did some weeding, resulting in an assessment of a large thistle that might be taller than Abby.
 Here’s just one pile of buckthorn that was cut from a plot!
Meanwhile, I went to the bog to remove buckthorn. Since we had removed all of the buckthorn from four of my plots yesterday (HUGE thanks to Jennifer, Laura, and Leah), I only needed to remove it from one more plot. And I did it! Buckthorn was cut and herbicide was applied to the stumps so that it won’t grow back (*crosses fingers).
 Abby shows us her favorite Snapchat filter with this stunning selfie When we convened for lunch, several of us tried out various Snapchat filters and talked about which ones we like best (In case you’re wondering, my favorite is the flower crown or the dog ears). My data loggers arrived so another shout-out is in order, this time for Gretel and Will, who figured out how to put in the batteries. After lunch, we were ready to get back to work.
I went back to the bog to set up my data loggers. These measure micro-climate data like temperature and humidity. Afterwards, I joined James and Lea in p1 to catch any plants that had been missed previously. We found 11 new plants! It started to rain once we finished so we trekked back, finished some chores, and headed home.
Everyone was hungry after such a busy day, so we were excited about the risotto and salad that Lea made. We were also excited to treat ourselves to ice cream for dessert. Unfortunately I broke a spoon, but someone said it must have happened because all of that buckthorn cutting made me really strong.
It’s a busy day here at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Art, Char, Suzie, and Suzanne were all in this morning, counting achenes and cleaning heads. We’re about 75% through Bag 5 out of 12. I’ve continue to dry and freeze seeds from 2014 and stay busy with my common garden experiment out at Rollins Savanna in Grayslake, IL. We were also excited to welcome our new volunteer Ivy, to Team Echinacea!
 Everyone hard at work and enjoying some coffee!
Today most of team went away to work on the Nature Conservancy project with the Western Prairie Fringed Orchid. And while I did not attend, from the group chat and an email, I deduced that a good ole’ time was had, that there was chocolate, and that it was a great year for flowering! I am looking forward to hearing about their trip and the project when they return tonight!
A select few of us, however, stayed back at camp to work on independent projects and oh, what an eventful day ensued! This day consisted of success, strife, disgruntled bumble bees, and progress!
Ah yes, I remember it like it was yesterday; however, it was only today, which really says something about today. Anyways, this morning Leah and I headed over to p2 to catch pollinators for my independent project about intra-specific pollen diversity. Leah caught a bumble bee, which unleashed a tenacious fury that Leah and I had never seen before. Who knew a bumble bee could get so angry or make itself look so large? Fortunately, it was in a vile and we observed safely from the side lines.
 Leah and the indignant bumble bee. Returning to the Hjelm house, I began painting bracts and Leah completed a lot of her pollen catalogue!
Jennifer and Alyson had already been working in the bog all morning removing buck thorn from Alyson’s plots for her independent project. Leah and I joined later to take down the relentless oppressor AKA buckthorn AKA buckthorn-(in-my-side). Ah, I kid, I kid…Much like this goat we spotted, the newest member of Team Echinacea.
I kid because it is more likely that we were a thorn in the buckthorn’s side because there are now 4 plots near the bog cleared of buckthorn!
 The newest member of Team Echinacea being camera shy… Other notable events that happened at the bog:
- Jennifer took down a goliath buckthorn with her bare hands! (and a saw)
 Jennifer vs. buckthorn. Winner: Jennifer. Every time.
- A beaver was spotted on the edge of one of the plots! There are chewing marks on the side of this tree, but unfortunately it wasn’t buckthorn and the beaver was notified that we would no longer be outsourcing jobs to her and would rely on the robust and unyielding strength and determination of team Alyson/Jennifer/Leah/Laura.
 Just a beaver workin’ hard. Town hall with almost all of the flower children still away with the orchids was peaceful, quiet, and uneventful, allowing me to write this long flog post. The three remaining flower children were therefore able to cook in much smaller portions, to long for post-dinner conversations and shenanigans, and to take naps in everyone’s beds.
Today we all divided up to complete phenology at all sites but were interrupted by thunder. We all hurried back to the Hjelm house to wait it out. After seeing the closest lightning strike most of us have ever experienced we decided it would be best to wait until 4 to go back out. Some of the taller members of the team were concerned for their safety still & suggested short members go out first because they’re “farther away from a lightning strike”. Ruth visited today to help with phenology and also made tags during our lightning break. During lunch Lea updated us on her independent project. She wants to look at how burn years affect co-flowering species of Echinacea and settled on other composites. Because they aren’t clonal it’s easy to track individual flowers and Lea feels comfortable recognizing when composites are flowering. She’s going to track when composites along a transect in Staffanson begin and end flowering and compare the burned unit to the non-burned unit. Jennifer helped clarify the difference between Andrena and Melissodes to other Lea and me. Although she described their different appearances she told us the biggest difference is their foraging behavior atop Echinacea. Eventually we finished phenology for the day and headed home to eat Amy and Laura’s wild rice soup.
Female Melissodes Highlights of the day:
Jennifer brought her munchkin, Zachary, to work. It’s never too early to join Team Echinacea.
Ruth brought an amazing rhubarb bundt cake and Amy, Lea and Laura fought over the last piece (James took the second to last all for himself).
Playing “was that thunder or a truck?”
Happy Independence Day, flog readers! The team had the day off today, but that didn’t stop Leah, Scott, and I from doing a little fieldwork this morning. Leah and Scott caught pollinators and worked on Leah’s co-flowering study while I painted and bagged heads at Around Landfill in preparation for crossing tomorrow as part of the compatibility experiment.
We honored the holiday this evening in Alexandria, the so-called birthplace of America. After eating a traditional American meal of Chinese buffet food, we went to a concert on the lawn of the Douglas County courthouse. Here we heard many patriotic tunes such as “America the Beautiful” and “God Bless America.” We took the scenic route back to Kensington and admired the clouds the entire way. Finally, we stopped at the Kensington Runestone Park to visit the true birthplace of America, where a Viking expedition left a runestone all the way back in 1363. The runestone doesn’t say what date it was engraved so it’s tough to say whether July 4th is actually America’s birthday, but that would be quite a coincidence. Either way today was a great day!
 “Everything is awesome! The clouds are so cool!”- at the birthplace of America
Today team echinacea celebrated independence day with a picnic at the Elk Lake beach, The gathering started with the annual reading of the Declaration of Independence, and remembering why we celebrate on the Fourth of July. After the reading was complete the team had a potluck which included baked beans, lots of fruits and veggies and some really good iced tea! After eating and of course waiting 30 minutes some of the team swam and canoed. All in all a great picnic and the team is looking forward to having the day off tomorrow!
Stuart starts off the reading of the Declaration! The Feast!
The team all headed in on Saturday morning to help do phenology at all the remnants, P1, and P2. Stuart explained the maps to everyone and we were off. James and I headed out to the Rileys and Loeffler’s Corner. Many of the plants were midflowering. We finished our route in about 3 hours and headed back to the Hjelm House to begin P1 phenology. Scott wasn’t far behind and came out to help in P1. After that, everyone gathered around the porch and we worked on correcting some of the GPS/phenology mix ups so the maps can be more useful.
We all went our separate days feeling relieved that we made it through full phenology.
Is that a cone-headed grasshopper on a cone flower? This is not the pollinator we were looking for. Today was another eventful day in the great plains. We started the morning bright and early with pollinator observations, and while it wasn’t the busiest day, we still saw a number of solitary bees. Sitting and watching flowers for a few hours provides ample time for deep thoughts, such as wondering how bees can pollinate wild parsnip without getting chemically burned and why all other flowers but the flower I am observing have pollinators on them. Throughout the day, we continued to map Echinacea with GPS, and during the afternoon, our budding detectives, Lea and Will, sorted out all the inaccuracies of the GPS points. Tomorrow we plan to visit all sites to look at flowering phenology and style persistence.
After work, the town hall folks made some pizza and enjoyed some telephone pictionary. As you all know by now, we had planned to play more Farkle tonight, however during our game of telephone pictionary (a game similar to telephone, but with sentences and pictures rather than whispering), it came out that Amy “Farkle Queen” Waananen had been mind controlling us throughout the Farkle game last night. We have yet to discover how that had any effect whatsoever on the game last night, but investigations are under way. Provided is the basic photographic evidence of this event.
Amy, top middle, mind controls us during a game of Farkle
Hi world,
The first big issue of the day was the lone radish found in the fridge today. We tried to peddle it onto everybody on the crew, but most people thought it looked too smooshy, and nobody wanted to smoosh. Amy and I eventually split it in half and ate it before jumping in the car. Picture attached. It turned out to actually be one of our spicy radishes. I think that was appropriate because today was a spicy day.
 Spicy radish. Would you have eaten it? This day started out with distant sheets of rain that slowly crept up to base at the Hjelm House, forcing us to do indoor work. When the rain cleared around 9:30, crew members did bee observation videos. Some people were viewing bees for the first time, others were going out for their second stints. We saw some of the same patterns today that we say two days ago — Laura saw over 20 bees at Steven’s Approach, while other sites were pretty destitute. Other crew members worked on mapping and pulling hawkweed for a hawkweed eradication experiment in experimental plot 1. Also, we finished collecting our qGen2 experiment data for the year, freeing up more time and plastic toothpicks for other projects.
At lunch, to supplement our training yesterday on flower deformities, we talked about our own various human deformities, including dislocated fingers, weird moles and warts, and bruised ribs. We may make a fun little trip this weekend into Alexandria to visit an urgent care facility. From there, most of the crew split off to do phenology and GPSing. Alyson went to the bog, and Leah finished setting up plots for her own pollinator observations, and the family stayed behind to weed (including some gnarly thistles). I went up the Landfill bloc geotagging with Alex, with Abby and Lea doing phenology at the sites ahead of us and catching over 50 new buds. We GPSed over 60 flowers alone at Around Landfill and got over 80 flowers total. James and Will were able to finish mapping five sites on their own. All of this done with zero people getting electrocuted on the electric fence near the Landfill.
Alex narrowly escapes death, checking a tag for an an Echinacea under the electric fence at Around Landfill. At home, Leah and Amy made dank filafel and salad. We all discovered that mint works just as well as dill in tzatziki sauce. After that, we played Farkle well into the night, with Amy “Farkle Queen” Waananen winning two games, the first one in a wild horse race with Lea “The Farkle Hustler” Richardson. We look forward to our Friday Pizza and Farkle night tomorrow, followed by more Farlke-related activities over the long weekend.
One of my favorite activities last summer, while part of Team Echinacea 2015, was recording phenology data. We knew today was going to be the second time this week where complete phenology data would be taken for all remnant sites and experimental plots, so needless to say I was quite excited when I arrived this morning. After putting my lunch in the refrigerator, I sat at the long wooden table on the porch and looked over at the list of phenology routes. Soon teams were formed, routes decided, and after grabbing some tags, flags, and twist ties, we were on our various ways.
The list of sites to survey is extensive! I drove with Alex and Amy down to East Riley, starting at the southmost remnant site in our route. After visiting a few sites we met up with Leah and Abby at Loeffler’s Corner. I noticed Loeffler’s Corner still had many buds which weren’t yet flagged. Then the five of us headed up to Landfill to make quick work of assessing flowering day for each of the heads currently shedding pollen.
One plant that could have easily been mistaken as “Rays up 1cm” already had one anther producing pollen!
Alex working at Riley with the morning sun behind him! After lunch we had more phenology to do, and we realized that we needed to GPS the flowering plants at some more remnant sites. Experimental plot p2 still had many rows that needed to be searched for flowering plants and phenology, Alyson needed some supplies from Alexandria (for her independent project), and Alex needed to watch some of the pollinator visit videos that were recorded yesterday. We split into various teams and I ended up with James for the remainder of the afternoon. The two of us worked great together down at Loeffler’s Corner. We tried our best to find every remaining unflagged head and GPS each plant. By the end of the afternoon we were all hot and tired, but so excited about finishing the GPSing for all of Loeffler’s Corner! Back at the Hjelm house, everyone did their chores and wrapped up the long day.
 While working at Loeffler’s Corner, James and I saw (and heard) four trains pass by. Needless to say we were definitely repeating back tag numbers while taking GPS points! For dinner, Alex made an amazing Ratatouille with summer vegetables and goat cheese. Many of us ended the night with showers and ice cream- perfect after a long day of phenology fun!
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