We are over the peak harvest bump! Looking through the harvest data sheets its clear that we have harvested well over half of the heads that were in cg1 this year. Lydia and I are dissecting the heads that were used in the quantitative genetics experiment this year. Out of just over 200 we are more than halfway finished extracting the achenes, each head takes approximately half an hour. Prepping the new experimental plot is still in progress though most of the trees have been cleared out at this point. We’ve begun collecting little bluestem and Bouteloua seeds which we will broadcast in the new plot this fall. We’ve also discovered windy days are NOT the best days to do this, even a slight wind will carry away the little bluestem. We also completed the first demography recheck of the fall and there are many more to come.
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Hey everyone! Sorry it’s been a while since our last post, we’ve just been so busy! A lot has been happening here in Kensington. Last week we finished demography (the first run though) with a visit to Krusemarks. Unfortunately the GPS would not cooperate and we couldn’t actually map out the plants there. The walk there and back however, was quite exciting as we waded through stinging nettle and poison ivy and even decided to take a short cut through the corn. We also have begun collecting sideoats grama grass and little blue stem seeds that we’ll plant in the new common garden. Ilse and I have been hard at work hauling trees from new common garden site (photos to come) and today (after 3 attempts) we got the tractor going and dragged a ton of trees out from the field and into massive burn piles. We’ve also been harvesting Echinacea heads like crazy! Nearly all the heads in the qGen2 crossing experiment have been harvested and today we did our first dissections. I would also estimate we’ve harvested roughly half of all the other heads in the common garden. This stack of bags in Hjelm House just keeps growing.
In other news, the last head in the common garden was done flowering today! Unfortunately its flowering period was prematurely cut short due to grasshopper herbivory. Apparently the immature florets and anthers looked pretty tasty. Grasshoppers have also taken a liking to the heads from the crossing experiment. Much to our dismay, we’ve returned to a couple heads that look like this:
This is quite frustrating since many times the grasshoppers have chewed the bracts down so much that it’s impossible to tell what color the head was painted and therefore some of the of crosses are going to lose a fair number of achenes. Alas, we’ve stopped de-bagging the heads in hopes of combating this issue. Well I think that’s all the news for now. Have a good rest of the week! This week has been full of demography and clearing a plot to plant seeds from the crossing experiment that took place this summer. We’ve been busy lopping, chain sawing, weed whipping and painting stumps with roundup in order to make way for the incoming prairie. Demography is almost done, just one site left to hit up for our first sweep through. This afternoon while Stuart was busy trapping gophers Lydia and I spent the afternoon harvesting heads from the crossing experiment, we were on our second to last head when we encountered a curious situation. We were at the correct row and position and just could not find the plant that we had visited so many times this summer. We did however find a small hole in the ground near where an Echinacea plant should be. We pondered what to do, then Lydia finally exclaimed “I’m going to go-for-it”! Then she put her face to the ground, peered in and shouted “I see a mesh bag!!” Then in a flurry she reached down inside the hole and pulled out an already harvested Echinacea head…. …the gophers must have read the protocol because they seemed to know to leave 3 centimeters worth of stem from the base of the head. The first of the month started off with Phenology on only 4 plants…but now we are down to the last two! Head harvesting is underway and it looks like we will have plenty to harvest come Thursday. We are staying busy trying to keep up with repainting heads in the crossing experiment before they are ready to be harvested, but the grasshoppers are doing their best to sabotage our efforts, check out this guy caught in the act of eating off painted bracts! Yesterday Lydia and I mapped out a potential location for a new common garden where the progeny from the crosses from this summer will be planted this fall. This morning we are off to do demography and survey, as well as harvest the heads at Hegg lake. We will harvest all plants in the experimental plot there as well as the pallida plants Dayvis observed pollenators on and the nearest angustifolia plants to determine if any of the progeny from those heads are a product of hybridization…we may see some interesting results! The end of another week has snuck up on us. Kory left today which means Team Echinacea is down to just Ilse and myself. We’ll be around until early to mid-October or until all the field work is done for the season. Can you believe we’ll still have a couple heads flowering on Labor Day?! Today we harvested for the second time in CG1. The three of us didn’t expect many heads to be ready, especially since 3 days ago we harvested ~1% of the flowering heads this year (and like I just mentioned, there are still heads flowering!) but holy moly! There was a sharp increase in the heads harvested today. I would estimate we got roughly 110 heads, which would put us around 6% complete. Maybe “holy moly” was a bit dramatic, but it seemed like a lot more than earlier this week. Many of these heads were also in the qGen2 crossing experiment which is great since we’ll want to get those heads drying and dissected as soon as possible in order to plant the achenes this fall (and before it snows). We also continued surveying and entering demography information this week. Today Ilse, Kory, and I headed to the Landfill site where we flagged all the flowering plants and took information on how many heads they have and their GPS coordinates. We’ll still need Stuart to look over that site to make sure we have found all the flowering plants (try as we might, we seem to always miss a couple) but it’s been great to make some progress with the bigger sites. This past week we also decided things might be a bit more interesting here in Douglas county if we renamed some of the remnants to be more exciting and/or secretive. Thus far we’ve come up with: Let us know if you think of any others. Be creative! We’ll want next year’s Team Echinacea curious and intrigued by the possible mysteries at each of the remnants. Andddd speaking of Liatris, Ilse and I found a beautiful white Liatris at Hegg Lake while we were harvesting Dayvis’ E. pallida and E. angustifolia plants. Check it out!
Hopefully this week was the last of the heat wave! I’m ready for it to go back to being in the 70s. Have a good weekend! Lydia Today was a very productive day! In the morning Ilse did phenology, and came back with great news! There are only seven heads left; flowering is almost done! Lydia worked on her aphid experiment and I worked on my poster. Around 10 am Ilse and I went to SPP and worked on the Demography project. In the afternoon Lydia (one again) worked on her aphid project, and Ilse and I payed a visit to Hegg lake to do Demography on the recruitment sights. Overall a very productive day for Team Echinacea. On a side note, this little blue gem just started flowering! Kelly’s data from 2012 modified for use in RStudio We wrapped up the week with a productive Friday. In the morning Kory headed out to Hegg Lake, while Sarah assessed phenology in the common garden (I think we were down to 75 heads today). Ilse and I have been slowly repainting the heads in the qGen2 crossing experiment. Nothing is ready to be harvested from the experiment yet, but it’s good to revisit the plants and stay ahead of any paint flaking off. Even without painting the entire head (a mistake I was making earlier this week) it’s still a slow process. Here’s one I finished today. I still may be going a little excessive with the paint…
Before lunch we all weeded the common garden for any leftover thistle and birdsfoot trefoil. We managed to pull quite a bit of thistle but didn’t find any trefoil. A good sign? After a quick lunch we split up and went to the remnants Steven’s approach and Riley to finish up the last three seedling searches. We all went our separate ways after that: Ilse continued to re-paint heads, Kory edited the last of his pollinator videos, and I finally finished my “re-checks” in the common garden (I seem to be the slow poke of the group). I also began taking pictures of leaves in the aphid addition/exclusion experiment to count trichomes and see if there are any differences between treatments. I’ll keep everyone posted as that progresses. Have a good weekend! Today was a busy day for the four of us. We started work at 8am searching for “can’t finds” in the common garden. Kory and Ilse left after about an hour to GPS Landfill for seedling re-finds. Lydia and I followed soon after. We finished Landfill around 11 and then flagged flowering plants we came across. These will be mapped later on. Kory and I went and flagged re-find points at East of Town Hall. Then we met Ilse and Lydia back at the Hjelm house for lunch. The afternoon consisted of Kory and Ilse going to do seedling re-finds at Randt while Lydia and I did re-finds at East of Town Hall. We finally finished all the seedling re-finds!!! That’s all for today! – Sarah B It’s getting lonelier and lonelier at the Hjelm house these days. Today is was just Lydia, Sarah, Kory, and I. The morning consisted of phenology and seedling refinds at SPP. Then after lunch Lydia worked on her aphid addition/exclusion experiment and it seems that the aphids are disliking this heat wave almost as much as us, if not more, as she found an abundance of aphid skeletons this afternoon. I pollentated and repainted some heads while Kory and Sarah knocked off a few rows each of refinds in the cg1. Then the three of us hit up LC and found some seedlings. Here is a seedling from 09, as you probably could have surmised yourself. The afternoon wrapped up with the most pressing of tasks…some unfinished business if you may. We began the process of finishing up some ice cream that has been in the freezer all summer. Hopefully it wont take too long to finish off the rest of the ice cream, but I’m sure we will manage somehow, working long hours if we must. |
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