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It was a quiet weekend in the townhall, as many of its residents were out of town. In the morning, an onslaught of heavy rain foiled Dayvis and Marie’s plans to visit Hegg Lake. Undeterred by the weather, Sarah B braved the elements to collect data on phenology in the remnants – it wasn’t long before she returned with soaking datasheets, though.
In the afternoon, Sarah B, Marie, and Dayvis drove to Alexandria to do laundry and have lunch at their new favorite place to eat: Mi Mexico. If you are ever in need of a place to eat in Alex, I would encourage you to check it out! Dayvis decided to throw caution to the winds, and ordered deep-fried ice cream for desert.
Shown above: The festive interior of Mi Mexico, beloved lunchtime destination
Due to last night stormy weather, most of us could not keep collecting data as in previous days. Marie could not measure her plants; Kory and I did not observe as many pollinators as normally we do. Only Sarah B. maintained her data collection immutable. Consequently, I went to the Hjelm house to start pinning the pollinators that I have been collecting since Sunday. After Jennifer and Stuart explained the principles of pinning insects, I could pinned fourteen of the twenty one insect collected during this week. Definitely, it will facilitate identification of pollinators enormously.
Personally, this week was a very revealing week for me since I had the opportunity of witness the presence of the three species of echinacea in this region. Since my research involve the interaction among these species of echinacea, I have been very involved in observe the flowering and the location of the different species in this area. Thus, introduced Echinacea pallida started flowering (White pollen) at the Hegg Lake on Sunday while native angustifolia did the same on Tuesday (Yellow pollen).
After looking for four times, I finally found echinacea purpurea in a restored prairie at the 27 road. Although I am really interested in including this other introduced echinacea species in my pollinator and phenology research, it has been really hard to reach and effectively located the entire population of this type of echinacea. For now, I just got a picture of an almost ready to flower individual of Echinacea purpurea.
Echinacea pallida started flowering on Sunday. Since then I have been able to observe, collect, and film the different species of insects that pollinate this plant. It has been such a wonderful experience to work surrounded by the beautiful landscape of the Hegg Lake Wildlife Management Area. I am so excited to start getting data that will elucidate the real possibilities of hybridization between Echinacea pallida and Echinacea angustifolia.
Even though I was more than ready to have my second full morning of pollinator observation today, the rainy-windy-cloudy conditions changed my plans. Instead, I reunited with my fellows of the team echinacea to flag and twist-tie flowering heads at the common garden one. At the same time, Sarah Sakura Baker was observing flowering Echinacea angustifolia for her independent project. Later, we went to the common garden two to keep measuring the Echinacea population located there. We just completed the first thirty of eighty rows. We expect to finish them by the end of this week. Today, Lydia could spend her entire afternoon working in her aphid’s research.
Hello Everyone!
It was calm sunday here. However some people did end up doing research, such as Davis, Marie, and Sarah B. Reina and I went to Hegg Lake just to get outside and walk around the prairie. The Flax are blooming making it very beautiful.
On our way back to the car we even saw a almost blooming Echinacea!
Now that the echinacea will be blooming things are going to get a wee bit busy here!
Kory
What a week it has been! I arrived last Sunday to Kensington, MN and moved into the Town Hall. It’s no longer used as a public building, it was converted into a residence and is holding 9 Team members this summer. My room is a newly added loft space overlooking one of the basketball nets in the main room.
I started my first day on the project learning the ropes. I had a great introduction with “searching forStipa”. What does that mean? Well, looking for a specific grass in the tallgrass prairie. It was difficult to spot at first (and still kind of is) but it is a very distinctive grass. Not much is known about the biology of this grass which is why it was planted in the experimental Common Garden so that it could be observed and recorded. Can you find the Stipa in the picture below? Follow my Twitter feed @summerofscience for the answer (posted July 2).
I have travelled outside of the Common Garden to Hegg Lake twice, once with Marie and once with Kory. I helped Marie measure her F1 (first generation) hybrid Echinacea. I went with Kory and visiting scientist Jennifer Ison to learn how to capture and identify pollinators. I also visited Staffanson with Sarah B and Stuart. We tagged and flagged flowering Echinacea and Stuart gave us a tour of the prairie.
I am learning lots of new science and gaining valuable field experience. A typical day starts around 7 AM, I don’t need to get up this early but it lets me take my time getting ready and having breakfast. We carpool to work which starts at 8:30. Stuart gives us the run down for the day and we usually start off with Stipa or Echinacea searches in the morning until lunch. After lunch, we work on our individual projects until the end of the day around 4:30. Since I do not have a project yet I spent this week learning about current projects and visiting the other field sites.
Conditions in the field are, well…different from the classroom or a lab. Mornings are nice and cool, but if it is damp the mosquitos are swarming. Since insects are of interest in this project we cannot wear repellant in the field. The skies have been clear lately, so as the day goes on it warms up quite a bit and the rays from the sun are pretty strong. We have to wear long pants because we are in a tall grass prairie with insects, snakes, and prickly plants. If we don’t want to get our arms scratched or bit we should wear long sleeves. Long sleeves + long pants + sun = sweaty scientists. I’ve ditched the long sleeves but I have paid the price with a few scratches here and there.
Since it was a big and eventful week for I treated myself to a Saturday getaway to hike at Maplewood State Park about 70 miles away. I have never been to a forest that remote before and although I stayed on the trails I still saw a lot of wildlife. Turtles, dragonflies, birds, muskrats, and maple trees, of course. Even with a map and compass I still managed to get lost but I was able to admire the beauty of nature until I found my way back.
After the hike I was starving and craving Thai food, something you can’t get near Kensington. So I drove to Fargo, North Dakota (yes, like the movie) and is the largest city within 100 miles of Kensington. I didn’t see much to do after lunch and was getting tired after hiking all day so I made the 93 mile trip back to Kensington.
Don’t forget to check in for daily updates from the rest of the team on the flog and stay tuned for my next post.
-Miss Z
On a gloomy day in Kensington, the team managed to make the most of it. In the morning, Sarah B went to look for flowering plants on some of the remnant sites and then spent some time with her parents in the afternoon. Sarah Z decided to have an adventurous day and go to Maplewood park. The four of us left at the town hall, took it easy and ate delicious homemade cookies. 
There is nothing like fresh cookies and milk to make up for a rainy day!
What a beautiful 4th of July!
This morning was jammed packed with grass. Team Echinacea did another round of searching for stipa followed by an assessment of dichanthelium in the ’99 south garden. Jennifer Ison and her father came and helped out with both these surveys and will be around for a couple weeks. In other news: Sara Z found a massive (nearly 1m) and intact snake skin which she kindly bestowed upon an excited Sarah B.
After all the grass searching we all went our separate ways (or rather back to the town hall) to put together our various potluck fixings and then met up with Stuart and his family at Elk Lake where we feasted upon a variety of delicious food. I definitely set a personal record with the number of deviled eggs consumed in one afternoon, and I don’t think I was the only one uncomfortably full. Dayvis entertained us with his Bandola while we digested and then many of us went out for canoe rides. After struggling a bit with steering the canoe properly, Dayvis, Hattie, and I smoked the other canoe in a “race” back to shore. After more swimming, snacking, and socializing it was time to head back and rest up for watching fireworks this evening. Happy 4th of July everyone!
Today started of with a bang as part of the crew headed off to go strawberry picking at the holmes city berry farm this morning. We got just enough to tide us over until the weekend, or maybe just enough to last some of us through the afternoon…if we’re lucky…
But alas, it was back to work. Sarah B, Sara Z and Stuart (aka the S club) headed out for the Preserve for a superb time. The rest us did a solid hour of stipa searching then we finished up the morning assessing cg1. Then at lunch Stuart gave us all a very interesting lecture on Echinacea sex, needless to say it was very scandalous and left a few Echinacea highly embarrassed as some of their photos (mid pollination!) were used in the presentation.
After lunch the crew went their separate ways, most worked on independent projects. Marie, Dayvis, and Sara Z headed off to find plants out by the county park among other things. Kory continued with some preliminaries for his project. Reina and I finished up assessing cg1 with the help of Sarah B, Per, and Gretel. The last of the crew to return today was Lydia after a long afternoon battling ants during her aphid addition in cg1, but we can proudly say she did return victorious: Lydia 1, Ants 0, however there were a few casualties (namely aphids) that regretfully did occur during the process.
All in all another great day for Team Echinacea!
Hello everyone!
Today Team Echinacea was extremely productive in all of our endeavors. In the morning the team continued the search for Stipa (a.k.a. porcupine grass) that was planted in the common garden. After about a hour we switched gears and looked for flowering echinacea plants in the common garden in preparation for the crossing experiment this summer. Reina and Pam continued collecting data on photosynthetic rate and even finished a portion of their data set! Huzzah!
After lunch we had time to work on our individual projects! Ilse continued her work on “R”, Sarah B got a solid amount of data entry done, and worked on her data sheets. Marie, Dayvis and Sara Z went to Hegg Lake to look at hybrids and Echinacea pallida respectively. Gretel and I made pollinator exclusion bags for my project, as well as the crossing experiment. Here is Gretel cutting the bridal veil!
And me sewing the bags together! I got to work on a awesome old singer sewing machine (the best part is that it folds into a desk!).
Thats all from me today! -Kory
Perfect weather! Just like my home country (beautiful).
Today morning, we searched for Stipa grass and flowering Echinacea (My favorite task) in the common garden. Afternoon, we searched for more Stipa grass. Then, we worked in our projects. Marie received a scan and starting playing with it. Lydia continued her work with aphids. I received my cameras and started practicing the difficult art of insect hunting. Kory was preparing his cameras to identify pollinators, and Sara B. was checking status of plants in several sites of the area. We ended the day eating a delicious chili prepared by Ilse.
Sunday I found a Echinacea pallida very close to flower at Hegg Lake, I will checked it tomorrow. Maybe, my time to start getting data is tomorrow. Inshallah!
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