|
|
Birds foot trefoil has slowly been making its way into P1 along with its buddy Canada thistle. The time has come to put an end to it! Today P1 was mapped out and all the invaders were marked for termination. The eradication will began right after the next rain. It looks like perhaps Friday will be the day as rain is looking good for Thursday. Everyone will have to glove up and teach these pesky invaders a lesson! Look further down the post to see how Will has devised a plan for extra triple protection from sun to take on the task!
Will has decided that extra protection will be needed to take on this task and its shown here demonstrating the latest in ultra triple protection. No sun will be getting in his eyes!
Another long morning of phenology
Nobody knew the protocol, apparently
Gretel sunk our visors one by one
Until 12:30 we toiled in the sun
So much end of flowering to observe
The plants have been thriving at Staffanson Preserve
Into boots our feet slid after lunchtime fun
For Hegg Lake had much more work to be done
On the hills we tagged more angustifolia flowers
Lots of us also helped Taylor and Amy for hours
If only we understood those rogue Echinacea plants…
Another cruel joke by Team Pallida, perchance??
 Measuring baby hybrids for Taylor’s experiment!
 Everyone’s thrift ready! Today we decided to do a little thrifting before going grocery shopping. One of my favorite things to do is shop and I love thrift stores! Everyone got some really cool stuff all for just a few bucks.
It’s been really humid outside all day until now… We just finished spending about half an hour out on the porch watching the clouds shift across the sky. We were pretty convinced a tornado was on its way because part of the sky was green and the clouds were doing funny swirl-like movements. Not to mention our phones kept alarming us all with tornado-warning alerts and the fire department’s loud siren didn’t fail to have us migrate to the inside of the house. Fortunately, there is no tornado but only rain. Looks like we’ll be wearing boots to work tomorrow!
Out storm watching on the porch.
Today I arrived at the Hjelm House and was greeted by this little guy.
 A tree frog waiting to say hello to everyone! This morning was the first in forever that we didn’t do phenology! Tomorrow we get to spend the whole day doing phenology at ALL of the sites! Amy and I got to adventure out this morning to GPS at a lot of sites. There were only a few points at each, so it went smooth and quick. Gina and Danny did the same, and now we are done GPSing! That means for our big phenology day tomorrow, we will get to use accurate maps at every site! Woohoo! The rest of the flower children worked out in P1 for the morning. They flagged and twist tied the remaining flowering plants.
At lunchtime, Amy and Brad Dykstra stopped in on their way home from checking on one of Amy’s plots in South Dakota.
We spent the afternoon in P1 doing a review of all the plants. We want to make sure the row, position, and twist ties match the other phenology records.
Hattie found a little bud hiding near the base that needed to be twist tied!
We had a pretty standard morning of phenology today. The only noteworthy incident happened to Abby and Amy–they lost, and later miraculously found, a green pen in the prairie. Yep, that was the most exciting part of our morning! At lunch, we were all sad because Will wasn’t there. (Get well soon, Will!) We split up in the afternoon. Amy and Danny did computer work, Ben, Abby, Gina and Per finished P2, and Lea, Taylor, Ali and I went to Staffanson to stake points. Ali and I walked about a million miles to get to all our plants, finding parts of the preserve we didn’t even know existed. At the end of our route, we were rewarded for our hard work with the discovery of raspberry bushes filled with newly ripening berries, which improved morale considerably.
 Ali loves wood lilies. A lot. Protecting the GPS from harm This guy stayed on me for a full 5 minutes. New BFF?
We started off this beautiful morning by going out in groups of 2 or 3 people to do phenology and mark points with the GPS. We get faster and more efficient at this everyday. Kevin Kotts from the MN Dept. of Natural Resources came and talked to us at lunch. He told us about his work restoring and conserving grasslands and wetlands in west central Minnesota. We learned a lot! After lunch, some people went out to mark more points with the GPS and the majority of us went out to P2 to continue flagging and twist tying flowering plants. We worked hard until late afternoon, and then called it a day.
 This plant at Hegg Lake has 13 flowering heads! Hattie helped us flag and twist tie at P2 today!
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!
|
|
