Plants are essential for life on earth, they provide food, produce oxygen, and are very very pretty! Unfortunately some plants become a problem when they are taken out of their natural habitat and inserted in another. Invasive plants can become a problem when trying to have a healthy environment for native plants as they create a competition for nutrients, water, and space. Although there are many different species of plants that are invasive there are some that are more common than others, for example: Birds Foot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) and Sweet Clover (Melilotus officinalis) are pretty commonly found in common gardens and prairie remnants. Although Sweet Clover is very common, getting rid of it is fairly easy, you just have to wait for a rainy day and then, once the rain stops, the soil will be wet enough to just pull the plants out of the soil! The same cannot be said about Birds Foot Trefoil though, its extraction does share the same need of rain but the extraction requires the use of soil knives and very often while trying to take out the plant it will break leaving the taproot still intact. 

Although there are existing methods to get rid of invasive plants, most of them are inefficient and require specific weather conditions. I decided to make a direct comparison between two methods of getting rid of Bird’s Foot Trefoil: Extraction, and herbicide. I randomly chose 20 plants of Bird’s Foot Trefoil around Tower Road and randomly selected 10 of them to be pulled out and ten of them to be treated with Green Shoots’ Blue Foaming Agent, Glyphosate 41%, and water.

While extracting Bird’s Foot Trefoil I started a stopwatch to record how long it took me to extract every plant. I divided the plants into two groups: medium plants and small plants as the difference is quite noticeable. The average time to extract medium plants was a minute and a half, while the average time to extract small plants was a minute. The amount of time is quite minimal but after applying the herbicide in the other 10 plants the difference is more noticas it took me an average of 20 seconds to apply in each plant no matter the size. Unfortunately the bigger plants were extracted some weeks ago by our team and I was not able to include it in this trial. 

Using herbicide was more efficient as it took less time, it was fairly easy to use, and it can be used at any day and time as long as it’s not rainy.

Here are some pictures of the application of herbicide, the herbicide is quite hard to see but you can zoom in!

Around a month ago Aaron and I (Gael) started taking care of the Viola tub at Hjelm, we have been counting the number of pods on each plant, the number of pods bagged, and we have been harvesting open pods. 
So far the trip has had its ups and downs, for example: on June 25th, 2025 I noticed that plant #8 suffered an abrupt decrease in its number of pods, it went from having 13 pods to only having 3, it was a sad day for the violas. Although we were sad for Viola #8, we realized that Viola #2 once thought dead was resprouting!

BUT WE CAN TELL STORIES ALL DAY! Let’s talk about what this post is supposed to be:

Current state of the Viola tub:

The table below includes the planted position, the number of pods in each plant, the number of bagged pods and the number of harvested pods. All the information in the table is specifically from July 22nd, 2025.

As of July 22nd 2025:

The average of pods per plant is 6.25.

The total number of currently bagged pods is 11.

The total number of harvested pods since June 24th, 2025 including the ones in the table is 16.

THANKS FOR READING!

SUMARY OF THINGS THAT OCCURED BETWEEN THURSDAY 7/17 AND FRIDAY 7/18 – SEE PHOTOS FOR VISUAL AIDES 🙂

• The goats were moved from the West to the East!
• The goats did cute goat things
• Chelsea made friends with goats until they tried to steal her pocket nuts…
• Lots of Monarch action both in G1 and at Staffanson!
• We collected demography of Echinacea at Staffanson West and East
• Gael fell in a hole…
• There were beautiful sunsets!!!

After four years on Team Echinacea, today is my last official day with the project. As a write this from the Chicago Botanic Garden, it’s hard not to get all retrospective about it. I’ve been on the team for 1/6th of my life! But also, only for about 1/8th of the span of the Echinacea Project’s existence. Now that’s crazy. I feel so fortunate to have been with this project in so many capacities—first as a summer REU student, then a work study, a grad student, and lastly a lab manager/research assistant. My time here has profoundly shaped me as a scientist and person, and I will always be grateful.

My last weeks in the field in Minnesota were at the start of June, first with just Stuart, Maddie, Maddie, and Jared, and then joined by the rest of the summer 2025 team. We got a lot done, and had fun to boot!

During the first week, the Maddies, Jared, and I staked, flagged, and searched seed addition transects in the remnants. Many seedlings juveniles were found!

After the rest of the team arrived the following Monday, we did some onboarding activities, including a visit to Staffanson and Hegg Lake. Both these sites burned this spring! This, plus the fact that we burned p1 and p8, means that p1, p2, p3, p4, p5, p7, p8, and p9 all burned this year. Gee whiz! A bountiful harvest lies ahead, I suspect.

The other big activity/accomplishment from this week (at least when I was there) was flagging p1. Usually, this is an endeavor that takes at least a couple days. However, with a brief head start and Ruth’s help, the team was able to flag the entire plot in one day! We benefitted from the fact that p1 burned in the spring because old pin flags, staples, and plants were easier to find. Huzzah!

After my last day in the field, Wednesday the 18th, the team gathered at Elk Lake for a potluck and swimming. Everyone brought delicious food, from fruit to beans to pasta salads to baked goods. Sooo satiated. After some diving shenanigans, the Maddies and I headed to the last stop on my Hoffman bucket list: Bullfrogs. Bullfrogs was not hoppin’, but we still got in a couple rounds of Maddie Sadler trouncing us at pool. The next day, my dad picked me up to fish for smallmouth bass (classic) east of Sauk Centre before we headed back to the cities.

Side note – I recently acquired a bare-bones digital point-and-shoot camera and have been enjoying clicking it at people. Below are two unique reactions to realizing your photo is being taken.

Now that the recent field pics are posted, I want to leave off with some of my fav pictures/moments/memories from the last few years that may or may not have made it on the flog before.

Burning:

Flora and Fauna:

Minnesota skies:

Shenanigans:

Thank you to everyone who’s made the last few years on the team such a treat. I’ll miss the prairie immensely during my upcoming stint in California, but there’s something to be said for new adventures, too. I’ll see you around!

– Wyatt