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Good evening Flogland! I’m writing from Sacramento, CA, where I am staying for the 2019 International Pollinator Conference at UC Davis. Today I heard talks about new quantitative methods for studying pollinator ecology and I also learned a whole bunch about pollinator disease ecology. Tomorrow will be full of more pollinator-themed talks and I will present my poster in the afternoon. I’ll post a copy of my poster below. I’m looking forward to learning more tomorrow! That’s all for now, Amy  Hello flog! After returning from our long day of grit-cultivation in the wet prairie for the orchid-hunting excursion, the team started back with a hard day’s work here in Kensington. The morning included phenology for several different plots, including P2. As the plants progress through the process of flowering, some of them are already beginning to approach end flowering, or have even finished flowering completely! It’s crazy to see how fast they progress!  After a lunch break, the afternoon included a contingent who trekked out to P8 to (finally) finish up measuring for the plot. Despite the grueling conditions of 90+ degree heat, the team pushed through to finally finish off the last few sections, which made for a satisfying end to the day.  That’s all for now! Avery Hi flog! Team Echinacea had an exciting weekend when Stuart, Riley, Julie, Amy, Avery, Miyauna, Jay, Erin, and I joined Gretel, who works at the Chicago Botanic Gardens, to monitor orchids at the wet prairie near Fertile, MN. We had a great time working with some new plants and learning about an ecosystem different from the ones we typically work with. It was a long day, but we cultivated a lot of grit and were glad to help Gretel. We’re grateful that she gave us this opportunity and we’d be happy to help again! Until next time flog! Ren Today was Phenology Phriday! Much of the team recorded flowering progress in P1, P2, and P8 this morning, where Erin found an adorable nest of baby Field Sparrows!  Amy and I split off to check on the plants in the remnants. Near East Elk Lake Road, I also practiced collecting Heliopsis helianthoides pollen for my upcoming pollen interference experiment. Excited to start my crosses next week! The other teammates were also making progress on their projects. Jay finalized details for data collection for the Ash Annihilation experiment. Drake continued collecting seeds from parasitic Comandra and a variety of host plants. Meanwhile, Jennifer and Miyauna tried dipping bees in fluorescent dye to follow their activity around the plots. I must say, their new costumes look lovely!  In the afternoon, Shea, Miyauna, and Jennifer pinned the bees they caught earlier this week, while much of the team returned to P8 for a full afternoon of leaf measuring. We’ve nearly canvased the whole plot of basal plants with fresh toothpicks, so thoroughly that we almost ran out of toothpicks! Overall, a productive day in the field. We started today by searching for flowering plants in Experimental Plot 2. The plants in the approach are really getting tall, and lagging on the walk in can mean losing the person in front of you!  Today I received a crash course in phenology. As heads begin flowering they progress through a number of stages that we record. Being able to distinguish between them is important to understand whether flowering has begun, or if we need to check back soon to record the start. Here are the four stages we saw today!  We all paired up to search the rows, which eventually resulted in Riley and I facing down our advancing teammates as we tried to thread the needle between the other pairs. We have to be careful about where we step in the plots so we avoid trampling plants.  In addition to plenty of plants we saw a menagerie of creatures in P2. My caterpillar adventures continue, and I am continually impressed by how many frogs live in the prairie! Back home in the swamp frogs are never a surprise, but here big leaps from little guys in the middle of the plot still startle me.    This afternoon we were visited by Tracie, Josh and Ruth, and over the phone Julie, Amy and I chatted with Lea about methods we could use this season. It was exciting to have new faces and voices around the Hjelm House! We spent the sunny afternoon sweating and rechecking flowering plant locations in P1, and weather providing we should be able to finish up P2 tomorrow. Today began with a 10 AM start time due to some forecasted rain and thunder. When the team arrived, everyone was catching up on either entering data, working on individual project proposals or getting some Visor forms ready for future data collecting events. After the rain subsided, a few groups went out to find some Porcupine grasses (stipa) in P1, while Shea and i prepared for YPT (Yellow pan trap) sites for collecting bees in the next few weeks.  Shea and I placed 38 YPT”s in the designated locations to collect bees and record the land use nearby the sites. This is an ongoing study for determining local bees families and species and also part of Shea’s 2019 project.  Last week while i was placing some distance labels along the west and east sides of P1, I spotted a frog on top of the very post that i was going to secure the plackard to. I took its picture at 9:19AM and gently moved it to a nearby sumac leaf and secured the sign to its stake. At 9:24AM when i was returning, the frog was back, this time on top of the sign. It didn’t even take the little amphibian five minutes to return to its perch.   In honor of Pollinator Week last week, us here at Echinacea East had the chance to go out and explore all the pollinators had to offer.  Whether it was trying out some expert bees-in-action photography.   Catching and learning how to identify pollinators in our area.   Or maybe even learning how to pin, we had an excellent week full of adventure! Oh and of course, as many native plants as possible. Have a great rest of the week and don’t forget to thank a pollinator today and everyday! -Miyauna There’s a few general facts that we state when orienting people to the anatomy of an Echinacea. To list a few: 1.) An echinacea head is not a flower, but in fact a composite of many florets, each of which have the full anatomy of a miniature “flower” 2.) Each floret produces an achene, regardless of whether or not it is pollinated. 3.) Each achene may be empty, or may contain exactly one seed. Now, the medically inclined or Latin-speaking flog readers may see where I’m going with this based off of the title. What if I told you that, as of today, we know that one of these three facts is no longer absolute? For the first time ever, we have found an achene that contains two seeds.  Twins! Normally, we xray achenes to see whether or not the have seeds in them. In this xray, all achenes pictured have seeds in them except the one in the bottom right which has, well, two! This exciting new discovery will shake the world of plant science. (Also, to put this in consumer terms, imagine breaking open a sunflower seed shell, and two seeds pop out!) Hopefully we’ll have more earth-shattering discoveries to share soon! For future reference: this is letno DT-6858 from 2013 Michael
Hello Flog, We’re wrapping up another week here at the Garden, but the excitement isn’t over yet! Tomorrow and Sunday at the Chicago Botanic Garden, members of Team Echinacea will be attending the Unearth Science festival. This festival is a great chance for everyone to see what all us scientists do at the Garden on a day-to-day basis. We’ve been coordinating with some of the organizers of this festival, and of course that means that there is going to be an echinacea themed table! We were more than happy to give Drew a bunch of the supplies and samples from our lab so everyone who comes can see what it’s like to process real echinacea plants. Basically, if you come to our table, you’re pretty much part of Team Echinacea! Read all about the festival – and how you can attend – at this link https://www.chicagobotanic.org/sciencefestival Hope to see you there! Michael  Michael and Drew with a bunch of Echinacea Lab supplies Hi Flog! One of the biggest task we do here at the echinacea project is what we call demap. Demap is our shorthand for “demography map” and is also certainly in no way a testament to our ongoing support of Bill Swerski’s Superfans and how they may pronounce “the map.” In demap, our goal is to take all of the field records from remnant populations of echinacea that we spend many weeks collecting and make them look all nice and pretty. If you ever doubt just how long that this data takes to collect, do a search of our “daily updates” category and count the percent of days that include the word “demo” or “surv.” Where the true magic happens with demo, as with many things with the Echinacea Project, occurs in R. There, we are able to take all the location records and all the flowering data for every plant for every year, and create a big, beautiful map.  A small, but still beautiful map. The big one is a little to crowded and confusing 😥 Why mention demap now in the middle of February? While we finished collecting the data back in October, just yesterday we finished making sure it was all accurate. It may have taken a while, but it’s always worth it for high quality data! Have a great weekend! Michael |
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