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It was a busy day for Team Echinacea! We started out by spending the morning working on phenology, which is in full swing this week. By dividing and conquering, we were able to visit the plants at half of our sites. While the majority of the plants are still in the “bud” stage, we are starting to see lots of flowering–I even saw my first shriveled style at Riley! After lunch, the team split up. Amy took Lea and I back to Riley and taught us to shoot points with the GPS units, while the rest of the team headed to Hegg Lake to flag both the P2 experiment and some invasive Echinacea pallida plants. Lea got the hang of the procedure very quickly, shooting almost a hundred points! I, however, had struggle after struggle with Chekov, which lost its connection as soon as we got to East Riley despite my valiant efforts at troubleshooting. Hopefully my next experience doing GPS will go more smoothly!
 Legions of flagged plants at East Riley Abby and Taylor taking on Riley!
Last summer several members of Team Echinacea began an experiment to determine the best way to eradicate Hawkweed from p1. Elizabeth, Cam, Allison, and Jared randomly assigned five treatments for removing Hawkweed in 16 1mx1m plots: 1. Hand pull, without tools, hawkweed basal leaves and flowers with the intent of removing as much root as possible (hand pull, no tool) 2. Hand pull with a tool with the intent of removing as much root as possible (hand pull w/tool) 3. Paint one leaf of each rosette with a 2:1 round-up herbicide solution with red dye (paint leaves) 4. Cut the flower head off of each hawkweed plant, paint 2:1 round-up herbicide solution with red dye on peduncle (cut head, paint stem). The 5th treatment was a control, where there was no effort to remove Hawkweed.
This summer, I revisited the plot where this experiment took place to observe how the Hawkweed looked after 1 year. I visually estimated percent cover in each plot, and am excited to compare the results from this year with data from last year to see how various treatments affect hawkweed presence after a year.
Hawkweed 2015 experimental plot 1
On Thursday, I took a field trip out to E. Riley. My first impression was that it
was a very small prairie. It’s a rectangular plot about 50m by 15m. One of the
long sides is bordered by a corn field and the other, a gravel road. There wasn’t
much evidence of it being a native prairie. I think they must have dug out the
ditch in order to build the road. I saw lots of Echinacea angustifolia. In fact,
there were over 100 heads along the 50 meters. The most common flowering
plants were the prairie rose and alfalfa. There weren’t any trees in the remnant,
but I saw and heard some bird flying overhead. I also saw a gopher standing on
the road for awhile. Overall, it was a cute prairie that surprised me with it’s large number of echinacea.
 
This area was indeed a remnant! The land was cliff-like; it looked as if it were a huge set of three steps that lead to a small lake. The rocks on the ground made it evident that the area was a native prairie. It looked as though the area may have been flat once upon a time, but was scooped up to contribute to the road we were standing on. This small region had a few Sweet Clovers and Wild Roses. We even spotted a patch of Poison Ivy (yikes!). There was plenty of Kentucky Bluegrass, a few trees around, and birds singing in the distance. Though I couldn’t spot it, Will & Abby saw the stem of a nearby E. angustifolia a few meters away. Hopefully, there will be some seedlings to look forward to at Woody’s!
I gazed upon the hill, basking in its slightly elevated majesty. My family’s roots in farming told me that it was likely too steep to have been plowed and was thus used for grazing livestock and having afternoon picnics. The uncomfortable steepness of the hill and proximity to the road told me the area had been disturbed and that soil was used to build up the road. This hill was not as small as I had expected and hope swelled in me as I thought of the other populations of Echinacea angustifolia fighting for survival.
A single tear gently rolled down my face as I observed the dominant species in the area: brome grass. Most of it was not yet flowering but I knew that without proper management, it would continue its grassy conquest. Though my identification skills are far from complete, I saw what I believed to be alfalfa or possibly pea plants. I saw a single wild rose beckoning me forward like the sirens of old, but alas, for fear of stepping on the Echinacea unseen I refrained and returned to my wheeled metal stallion.
As I left, I observed that the grass went around the hill and stopped only at the edge of the farm field and at the road. The experience left me humbled and eager to explore the vast fields of K-town and beyond.
The Riley remnant is composed of two halves, one north of mellow lane and the other south. The two halves are quite a bit different for being separated by only a few meters. The northern half falls on the side of a hill that was most likely never plowed. The hillside is filled with the non-native Kentucky Blue Grass, with a few patches of another non-native: Brome. The most abundant flower was the wild rose, and amongst the grasses many soon to be flowering Purple coneflowers were apparent. Moving across the road to the southern half the dominant grass becomes Brome. There is wild rose here but not as much. There are a few tall grasses; the dead stalks from last year are visible. There is a path through the middle that is often driven over to get to an agricultural field about 100 meters south of the remnant. This southern half was probably scraped and used to create the road that now divides the remnant. There are several Purple coneflowers in the ditch surrounded by invasive sweet clover which has a tall yellow flower and is the most abundant flower in this half. From these first few minutes spent at the riley remnant it is evident that this site will soon be filled with Echinacea flowers. What a wonderful sight to see!
 The view of the Tower Site from the driveway. On the left is Highway 27 and on the right you can see the bottom on the tower. Ben Lee, interviewed by Amy Waananen
AW: So Ben, tell me about where you are.
BL: Well, I am standing here looking at the site which is between the microwave tower and Highway 27. The tower is at the top of a pretty large hill. The cars are whizzing at by on the highway just south of where we’re standing, probably going at least 60 mph. The site itself runs along a fairly steep hill that is probably around 30 meters wide, sloping down from a line of spruces planted around the tower to the road.
AW: What does it look like?
BL: It looks a lot like any other roadside in the area; I notice that there are a lot of invasives, especially as compared to some of the other, more managed, sites that we’ve seen like Staffanson Prairie Preserve and Hegg Lake. Brome and Poa are the dominant grasses here, and I can see species like bird’s foot trefoil, alfalfa, and red clover as well.
AW: Uh oh. Any native species?
BL: A few! I see a native pea plant and yarrow flowering. Hopefully there are some Echinacea angustifolia in there too, but we can’t see them yet. Plus, I can see some bumble bees flying over the tops of the grasses and I hear birds in the grove of trees on the north side of the hill.
AW: What do you think the history of the landscape is?
BL: I imagine that there has been quite a bit of construction around here. You can see how they shaped this hill to lower the grade of the road, and there was probably quite a bit of disturbance from installing the tower. There is a strip of land that is probably about 3 feet wide running from the road up towards the tower where vegetation looks sparse or stunted. I wonder if there is an underground wire there. Other than that though, looking around I can see all the undulating hills in the area and can see how large of an impression glaciers left in the area.
AW: What is your overall impression of the site?
BL: Well, it is a small patchof grassland in the middle of a busy area. The lack of native prairie species is probably due to both the disturbances due to construction and the lack of management to promote prairie species—it is unlikely that this particular spot ever gets burned being so close to both the road and the tower. Although I don’t see any Echinacea here right now, I hope to see some later in the summer. Overall, this site seems characteristic of much of the potential habitat for Echinacea today—fragmented and literally shaped by human influences. It’ll be interesting to see how it is similar and dissimilar to prairie remnants such as Staffanson Prairie Preserve andprairie restoration sites like Hegg Lake.
On our bikes, Amy and I crested the hill on Dairy Drive and received a view of the fields below. Somewhere below us would be the Nessman study site. We biked along the road to find the study site and ran into a dairy farm with very cute cows. After some deliberation and consultation of the map, we turned around and arrived at the Nessman Study Site. As Amy looked out over the study site straining her eyes for an Echinacea angustfolia, she noted the large amount of brome present next to the road. She then looked into the field beyond where she observed a distinct line between the brome and another field. Amy said that it is likely that there has been some sort of grazing or agriculture on that field because of the uniform height of grasses and other plants in that area. Out in the field Amy was brokenhearted when she realized that we could only identify invasive plants such as dandelions and Poa. Although there was mostly invasives in the field we could hear and see many birds in the surrounding area. A small bumblebee even joined us as we observed the large field. With her knowledge of geology and construction processes Amy determined that the ditch was caused by the building of the road and that the field had been smoothed out from the undulations of a prairie by agriculture. We then began to ride back and started to see more native species such as the prairie rose which lifted our spirits.
Here are some pictures I took of wild parsnip at RRX. The leaves are compound, fairly large, and have rough,toothed edges. The flowers are large, yellow, and flat-topped, kind of like a bigger, yellow version of Queen Anne’s Lace. The flowering stalks are thick, and can get pretty tall. However, not all the plants will be flowering, so make sure you know what the leaves look like! The foliage has oils that will make your skin incredibly sensitive to sunlight, so it can give you terrible blisters.
My first impression of this area was to wonder if it was actually a prairie remnant at all. All I could see was a ditch with lots of brome and Poa. There was a fence about 10 or 15 meters away from the tracks, beyond which the ground dipped down considerably. This seems to indicate that the area beyond the fence is an old field that has sunk due to plowing and soil erosion. Other than its higher surface, the only thing that immediately suggested to me that this site was a prairie was a couple of Rosa arkansana plants. The most common plants, however, were definitely brome, Poa, and wild parsnip. After a bit more observation, I noticed a couple more native plants: veiny pea and a Solidago species. There were a couple of trees growing in the area, a cottonwood and a juniper. Additionally, there were two large downed trees that looked like they had been lying there at least a year. I wonder if they fell due to a natural occurrence such as a windstorm, or if people cut them down as a management strategy. I thought that because it’s next to a railroad, it’s possible that this is native prairie, burned occasionally due to sparks from a passing train. However, the predominance of weedy, non-native plants and the lack of insect pollinators or other animals led me to think that this is a degraded site. I saw no Echinacea plants there. Although the area was larger than BTG, it still seemed small, perhaps too small for a reproducing population.
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