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Hello, Flog!
The field season in Minnesota has wrapped up, and we have all returned to continue working hard at our various institutions. For the members of this years team returning to the Chicago Botanic Garden, that means analyzing all of the data (including 1000+ Echinacea heads) that we collected in the field and in our experimental plots.
Our last few days at the Hjelm house have been filled with harvest and management, getting ready for our prescribed burns this fall and spring. We’ve harvested all sorts of species – everything from Asclepias to Viola – in preparation to spread them after the burns in p1 and p8.
Thanks for reading the flog this summer! Here’s a parting shot of Hegg lake from the last day we were out there: white and purple asters with some great Solidago!
The very damp morning began with flagging p8 on each nail that was spaced 1 m apart. A then very interesting meeting with Joe Montoyne from NCRS who provided us with much insight into prairie restoration and some local history of local prairies. After lunch Michael, Tracy, Andy and i wnet to p2 to harvest more flower heads. As the summer comes to an end i am so appreciative of the opportunity i have had this summer with the Echin Project and the group of quality young people here. Rest assured citizens, these kids will be our community leaders, parents and professors leading us into the next generation at a when the world needs such an intelligent thoughtful group in charge. I have also gained an appreciation for what we have been blessed with in our very own west central Minnesota. Everyone is within a few minute drive to a prairie with a diversity that may go unappreciated until you spend some quality time walking and observing what the prairie has to offer. Our zoo is right here. There is a diversity of plants and insects that will require thoughtful consideration of how we choose to treat the soil and water. It may be difficult to imagine that not too long ago west central Minnesota was acre after acre of prairie.
Hello, Flog!
Monday was, unfortunately, a rainy, rainy day. Well, okay, maybe it started out just a slightly rainy day. But the kind of rain that makes it just impossible to do any dampness-sensitive research. We started off the day with the usual moist trudges through the ever-present big bluestem, and even managed to complete a few of the many field rechecks we have to do.
What are field rechecks you might ask? Sometimes, we look over the data from a summer and go, “Huh? What? How did this happen?” Our data, frankly, just doesn’t make sense. Sometimes one person will look at an area and say “There’s one plant!” and another might say “There are six plants here!” When we look at this data later, we need another opinion as to how many plants are there. And in comes field checks! (They’re particularly easy to do because they require the least walking, and therefore the least wetness.”)
Now, after lunch, picture Michael, Andy, and Lea poised to do P2 harvesting. Imagine them with bags and clippers in hand, ready to save achenes from the cruel fate of the ground. Imagine the cars bursting with egg cartons and data sheets full of LetNos (the identifiers we use each head).
Now imagine rain.
You’re not imagining enough rain, imagine more!
Well, it rained enough to make harvesting impossible. So instead of experiencing the thrill of saving a head from dropping achenes, we did some coding in R and called it a day.
Here’s to less rain this week!
Michael
Hello Flog!!
Wow today was very productive, as always. The morning was filled with the completion of many small projects. Michael and I finished demo at 6 different sites! Riley finished rechecks at P1, P6, and P9 (wow!). Andy and Kristen got all of their yellow pan traps put out as well! Many completion checks were made to the long list of “Echinacea Project: Things to do.”
 Michael staking a point Me observing a flowering plant At lunch, I gave a presentation about my project update. We had cake and ice cream afterwards as a farewell to me, as today was my last day 🙁
Stuart’s famous chocolate cake In the afternoon, Kristen, Andy, and Lea moved bee tents and collected yellow pan traps. Riley completed the final part of his project, which was measuring the thickness of the echinacea leaves. Stuart and Michael completed some behind the scenes work.
Signing off for good, so long flog!
Sincerely,
Morgan
Hello Echinacea Project readers! My personal project is actively taking place in experimental plot 7, a hybrid plot planted in fall of 2013. The primary purpose of the plot is to assess relative survival and fitness in Echinacea angustifolia and pallida, as well as hybrids of the two species. Data on survival, number of leaves, and size of these plants has been collected over the years. I will be using this data in an aster analysis to determine which cross type is the most fit. Unfortunately, only one individual has flowered over the time this plot has been around, and it was a pure E. pallida. From preliminary looks at the data, conspecific angustifolia seem to have the lowest survivorship and have the smallest average leaf length!
The other part of my project is assessing the physiology of these plants. For this, I have been using a Licor Li-6400xt, which can assess rate of carbon assimilation as well as transpiration (loss of water) in leaves. Getting the machine to work properly on Echinacea leaves took a ton of stress and time from me, but luckily it is up and running now. Using these measures can hopefully give us insight into why pure angustifolia crosses have lower survival than others. As I post this, I have made many observations on what factors affect photosynthetic rate the most in the plants. More shaded, thinner, lighter leaves, and partially consumed leaves all seem to display lower efficiency! I am really excited to integrate all of this data and ultimately analyze it!
Taking apart the Licor chamber to get it to work on Echinacea leaves… This was stressful. A tiny basal Echinacea in pt7. The variation is incredible!
Hello, flog!
Today, Team Echinacea continued our quest to measure every plant in P1. Yes, it takes a long time and yes, the big bluestem might be over our heads, but we will always carry on!
A quick recap of today’s measuring events:
After completing half of “Big Batch,” yesterday,(Big Batch is a large group of plants at the south end of the plot), we attempted to push ourselves to finish the rest of the plot today. And by “we” I mean two teams, in particular, decided to finish their rows as fast as possible (these teams will remain unnamed and totally not depicted in the pictures below).
Some A+ measuring These teams finished their rows impressively fast, and, while we made a good dent in the remaining measuring locations, we did not end up finishing. In the spirit of competition, I have decided to rank the participating parties in how good they were at measuring. The results can be seen below.
Rank #1: All humans who participated in the measuring today. Some humans are not pictured here but they were also just as good
Rank #2: The goats. They’re good at removing buckthorn but not great at measuring echinacea Thanks for reading!
Today was a big day for Team Echinacea, many things were accomplished all around. It started with funology at P2 with some harvesting. An ever-increasing number of heads are done flowering and ready to harvest. Which makes the already enjoyable task of phenology, suitable of the name funology! After returning to Hjelm the team dispersed into a brief session of task forces before returning to team work of goat moving! There are 4 goats that live in pastures around Hjelm, they are used to control the invasive buckthorn. The four goats are named Style, Scape, No S, and The Kid. Goat moving was an exciting change of pace for the team, none of our study organisms require herding or coaxing. The first step when moving the goats was to disassemble the electric fence and reassemble it around the new pasture. While the assembling was being assembled Andy and I were tasked with watching the goats in their old pasture and moving them towards the new pasture. This worked out surprisingly well, by the time the goats arrived at the new pasture the fence was near completion and no goats went on adventures too far from the path.
Andy carefully watching over the goats while they munch on some near by trees. Whoops lost half a goat during the transfer! Happy goats surrounded by their one love. Buckthorn. After the goat moving extravaganza we broke for lunch, today’s strange lunch conversation included how much Kristen would need to pay Evan for him to eat a large inch worm that was found on Andy’s shirt. Once this debate had been exhausted the team got back to checking things off the to-do list. Kristen, Evan, John, and Andy moved emergence traps and put out pan traps. A good chunk of P1 measuring was also completed, we finished the remaining sections of the inbreeding garden, then we started and completed the 99 garden. The plants in the 99 garden are significantly closer together which makes this a difficult task but when the team sets its mind on something it seems like we can complete almost anything! There is quite a large population of Big Blue Stem that calls P1 home, while it makes for quite a nice prairie community it is not so nice for us researches that attempt to navigate the plot. At this point in the season, the grass is over all of our heads which makes measuring plants that are ~30cm off the ground somewhat challenging.
Do you see Michael? It’s hard to spot him through all the Big Blue Stem! After work today Riley made a tuna pasta salad which was delicious. Then the “Roosters” were joined by Kristen for a showing of an episode of the bachelorette. Yet another fun filled productive day seems to have passed for team Echinacea!
Until next time flog,
Mia
P.S. Last time I posted I talked about my personal project as an update on Friday I did my 60th and last hand cross! So now on to pollen counting!
The last Monday of July, yikes. The season is unfortunately winding down and many of the individual projects are wrapping up or nearly wrapped up. The groups split up with CowBee doing their thing at P2 and the leftovers doing some phenology at p1. Kristin and i finished some bee stuff. Michael and i then picked up some soil samples at Hegg Lake West (by the way my favorite piece of land of the all the sites). In the afternoon, demography was continued after a brief interesting history of the Douglas/Pople County Landfill from Stuart. Kristin and Mia moved tents and everyone finished the day making more tags for demography. Tomorrow should be exciting as we will be wrangling up the goats and move them to a fresh patch of buckthorn. Found this Bombus bimac on my Mexican Sunflower on my first step out of the van at home Me doing demo Heres the Echin Trophy for Saturday Flekkefest 5K. Dont know the criteria yet for the winner but Zeke is in the lead.
Today was an eventful Sunday for many members of Team Echinacea. This morning, members of the Roost and I drove to Glenwood to see our very own Waterama princess, Anna Vold, in the annual Waterama parade. Waterama is an annual summer festival full of fun activities to celebrate water and lake culture. This is fitting because Glenwood is a quaint little town next to a very big lake. The parade was very chill, along with everyone watching the parade. Things were very not chill as soon as we saw Anna Vold drive up on her float. I think all of Glenwood could hear us cheering for Anna.
Anna the Aquamania princess waving to her fans. After the parade we headed back to Alex. I demanded that we all stop to take photos at a sunflower field right along the highway. We quickly did a round of phenology on the plants. I am glad that my friends were eager to let me take pictures of them because I think we all got a new profile picture out of the experience!
 Right after doing some funology on the Sunflowers. Evan’s arm was perfect for taking this selfie. Later at the Roost Mia cooked French Toast for dinner. We also played a few rounds of KanJam and Werewolf. And after dinner, a few of us went bowling. It is no surprise that Zeke (who is good at every sport except basketball) won the first round. One beer in however, Andy was able to steal a win for the second round using the 8lb ball. The only negative part of this activity was that unfortunately they did not take music requests at the bowling alley. We had fun despite this hiccup.
What a great day! See you tomorrow at work.
Hi flog,
Friday night we watched “The Truman Show” starring Jim Carrey. Since then the roost has been fighting the feeling that our existence is all part of a reality TV show….
Kristen bought an HDMI cord, so that the roost could watch movies such as, “The Truman Show”  Mia saw this beautiful bumblebee visiting a rose this morning. Cameras are everywhere. This morning me, Mia and Evan went out to Hegg Lake and observed bee visits as part of our study on pollinator efficiency, nicknamed “Pollen in the Bank,” (we call it pollen in the bank, since the bees make “withdrawals” and “deposits” from the pollen on the flower). This morning we observed five small black bees and removed anthers and styles before and after each visit. But where were the cameras? Were the bees actors?
Mia pulled styles from her hand crosses, which aim to see how many grains of pollen are needed to fertilize a single Echinacea floret. One of the styles from Mia’s hand-crosses was shriveled, which probably means that this style was fertilized. Or pretended to be?
While we were waiting for bees we found the cover to Andy’s visor (handheld electronic data recorder). An exciting plot twist?
Back at the roost, we ate corn instead of eggs. Andy, and Mia had friends visit from out of town. We visited Will’s puppy, Shadow. A friendly puppy going through teething? Or a trained actor meant to manipulate us for entertainment.
Andy and Anne made two toll-house pies (giant chocolate chip cookies; and product placement?)
Thanks
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