hello everyone!

Its that time of year again, the time for school to begin. Today was a sad – Stuart, Gretel, Per, and Hattie are heading back to Chicago so they can get settled down before school begins. Today I also realized that this is my second to last week with Team Echinacea! WHERE HAS THIS SUMMER GONE!?!?!?!?

In other non-revelational new, Sarah and I mapped Hegg Lake for my experiment, and finished mapping all of her fragments. Ilse and Lydia started repainting all the QGen heads, so that no data is lost (Lydia went above and beyond the call of duty and painted every bract on all of her echinacea heads).

In the afternoon we stapled all the positions that have remained unfound by Team Echinacea members since 2010 (sad). As well as beginning the common garden re-finds.

For simple ascetics here is a picture of Bee’s Balm from Hegg Lake.

Hope everyone has a nice week!
-Kory

Greetings from the Field Museum Chicago!

I have solved the mystery of the mini ants seen in Echinacea heads in the common garden. Below is a picture of the specimen. Those tic marks indicate mm and those small, yellow grains are pollen (Echinacea, I presume):

These ants have been identified as… drumroll please…

Photo courtesy of Alex Wild

Brachymyrmex depilis! Well, perhaps. This species is in need of a taxonomic revision as currently any yellow Brachymyrmex in North America are likely to be classified as depilis. This is one of the smallest ants in North America and usually subterranean.

Hey everyone,

We started off another week with a super productive Monday. In the morning the team split up between crossing and seedling re-finds. Ilse, Gretel, and I finished all the crossing in the morning which was especially exciting because we anticipated today being our busiest crossing day. Since many plants have finished flowering by now, we’re mostly topping off those last few styles with pollen and then waiting for everything to shrivel. While a few plants have hit snafus (pollen X running out before plant Y is finished flowering), the going has been steadily smooth. The seedling re-find crew (Stuart, Marie, Dayvis, Kory, and Sarah B) managed to finish two sites this morning with only one visor. Extra impressive!

Although we’re still sad to see the first of team Echinacea depart (Sara Z on Saturday), we welcomed the return of Mike, Reina, and Pam who spent the last week at ESA. The Gustavus trio spent most of the day measuring photosynthesis with “Helga” and collecting leaves.

This afternoon we all began measuring the Big Batch section of CG1. Although a daunting amount of plants, we managed to make a serious dent and will hopefully get through all of it by the end of the week.

I’ll sign off with a grasshopper photo I took during phenology. Have a good week!

A low key day here in Kensington, not much Echinacea Project work going on today. We bid our sad farewells (those of us who stuck around this weekend) to Sara Z as she left to head home and begin preparing for another year of teaching in Chicago. Today was filled with some cleaning, laundry and grocery shopping as per the usual; however, I did come across this curious sign today on my run, a historic site with arrows pointing in BOTH directions….

So curiosity struck and I decided to follow the arrow that pointed right, and I came across this little gem…

A monument erected in honor of the towns founders. To find out what is in the direction of the historic site sign’s arrow you will have to go see for yourself.

Once again, a hearty hello to readers on the flog-o-sphere!

As with many days this week, the morning started off with phenology. Now that more than half of the plants in the common garden have finished flowering, it can be accomplished in a little over an hour. The Sara(h)s measured plants in the 99 garden while Ilse, Lydia, Gretel, and Marie worked on crossing. Dayvis lurked in the basement of the Hjelm house, alone with his collection of pollinators and an insect identification book. Kory visited Hegg Lake and harvested his first Echinacea head for his experiment! At lunch, Marie practiced giving her poster presentation to the group.

After eating, Sara Z, Gretel, Marie, and Ilse stayed at the Hjelm house to finish crossing and measuring. The rest of the group traveled to East Riley for seedling re-finds. In high spirits after finding (although most often not finding) a seedling, Team Echincea adorned themselves with natural hitchhiker jewelry.

Crew members returned home in a timely fashion to enjoy some homemade pad thai prepared by Sara Z. Thai food is the only thing Dayvis has craved more than a machete all summer long – needless to say, he was sated. When Sara Z first arrived at the town hall, she was under the misguided impression that crew members play board games every night after work; the fact that we don’t has been a constant cause for consternation. At her dogged insistence, several of us joined her for a game of Bananagrams and Apples to Apples.

Have a great weekend!