This recruitment experiment was established in 2000 to quantify seedling emergence and juvenile survival of Echinacea angustifolia during reintroduction to sites with varying land-use history and burn schedules. Before 2014, we collected detailed data on each plant in the plots. Since 2014, Team Echinacea has censused each plot yearly to collect demographic data for every flowering plant.
In 2023, Team Echinacea visited 7 recruitment plots and searched for 163 Echinacea angustifolia plants that had flowered previously. Across the 7 plots, we found 118 basal plants and 46 flowering plants, and we were unable to find 16 plants. Of the flowering plants, 11 plants flowered for the first time in 2023. For each flowering plant, the team collected demographic data (number of rosettes and flowering heads) and shot a GPS point at the exact location of the plant. There was at least one flowering Echinacea plant at 6 of the 7 recruitment plots where plants had flowered previously, but we did not find any flowering plants at one site, rhp.
There were also two sites, rhr and rhw, that we have no 2023 demographic information for. We did not visit these sites for total demo censusing, and it’s possible that we never visited them over the summer. Alternatively, we may have visited them and found no flowering plants. Rhw was present on “demopup” (a list of demo sites for mopping-up any flowering plants that may have been missed), so there were likely no flowering plants there this year. Rhr was not on the demopup list. Bizarre! Stay tuned for any updates we may uncover.
Abby, Alexa, and Blaire search for plants at rkw, a recruitment plot located at Kensington WMA. We found 4 flowering plants and 4 basal plants at rkw this year.
This year, we used “demopup” to track progress as we revisted sites where we searched for and demo’ed flowering plants. Rhw made it on the list, but no such luck for rhr.
Start year: Plantings in 2000-2002
Location: Seven study plots on state land with different land use histories: old-field and restored grassland
You can read more about the fire in recruitment experiment, as well as links to prior flog entries about this experiment, on the background page for this experiment.
This recruitment experiment was originally established in 2000 to quantify seedling emergence and juvenile survival of Echinacea angustifolia during its reintroduction to sites with varying land-use history and burn schedules. Before 2014, we collected detailed data on each plant in the plots. Since 2014, Team Echinacea has censused each plot yearly to collect demographic data for every flowering plant.
In 2022, Team Echinacea visited 9 recruitment plots and searched for 168 Echinacea angustifolia plants that had flowered previously. Across the 9 plots, we found 76 basal plants and 126 flowering plants, and we were unable to find 14 plants. Of the flowering plants, 35 plants flowered for the first time in 2022. It was a high flowering year! For each flowering plant, the team collected demographic data (number of rosettes and flowering heads) and shot a GPS point at the exact location of the plant.
There was at least one flowering Echinacea plant at each of the 7 recruitment plots where plants had flowered previously. We also visited 2 recruitment plots at Hegg Lake WMA, a site managed by the Minnesota DNR, where the Echinacea had never flowered in the past. At Hegg West, we discovered a new flowering plant with 7 heads! At these two sites, we used a metal detector to find the nails marking the plot boundaries. We mapped the corners of the plots with the GPS so they will be easier to locate next year. The 6 recruitment plots at Hegg Lake WMA containeda total of 103 flowering plants, Eng Lake WMA had 16 flowering plants, and Kensington WMA had 7 flowering plants in 2022.
Lindsey uses a metal detector to locate the nails marking recruitment plot boundaries
Start year: Plantings in 2000-2002
Location: Seven study plots on state land with different land use histories: old-field and restored grassland
You can read more about the fire in recruitment experiment, as well as links to prior flog entries about this experiment, on the background page for this experiment.
This recruitment experiment was originally established in 2000 to quantify seedling emergence and juvenile survival of Echinacea angustifolia during its reintroduction to sites with varying land-use history and burn schedules. Before 2014, detailed data was collected on each plant in the plots. Since 2014, Team Echinacea has censused each plot yearly to collect demographic data for every flowering plant.
In 2021, Team Echinacea visited 7 recruitment plots and searched for 176 Echinacea angustifolia plants that had flowered previously. The team found 94 basal plants, 1 dead this year’s leaves, 2 dead last year’s leaves, and 49 flowering plants. In addition, the team discovered 12 plants that flowered for the first time in 2021, for a total of 70 flowering plants in the recruitment plots. For each flowering plant, the team took demographic data (number of rosettes and flowering heads) and shot a GPS point at the exact location of the plant. The team did not find the remaining 30 plants that had flowered previously, and there were 9 flowering plants with old tags that were not in the demo stakefile.
There was at least one flowering Echinacea plant at each of the 7 recruitment plots. The 4 plots at Hegg Lake WMA, a site managed by the Minnesota DNR, contained 51 flowering plants, and 13 plants bloomed in the plot at Eng Lake WMA. Four plants bloomed in the two recruitment plots at Kensington WMA.
On September 9, a crew from the DNR drove a Marsh Master through Hegg Lake WMA to spray invasive cattails. On their way from one patch of cattails to the next, they drove through one of the recruitment plots as well as experimental plots 7 and 9 and the Liatris transect, and they left distinct tire tracks through the prairie in those areas.
The Marsh Tracker tramples its way through Hegg Lake WMA
Start year: Plantings in 2000-2002
Location: Seven study plots on state land with different land use histories: old-field and restored grassland
Data collected: Plant status (basal, flowering, not present), rosette count, flowering head count, GPS point for each flowering plant in each recruitment plot
You can read more about the fire in recruitment experiment, as well as links to prior flog entries about this experiment, on the background page for this experiment.
In 2017, we searched in 7 recruitment plots for flowering Echinacea angustifolia plants. For each flowering plant, we took demographic data- counting the number of rosettes, counting the number of flowering heads, and shooting a GPS point of the exact location of the plant. Four plots had no flowering plants, but three of the plots had a total of 43 flowering Echinacea plants. Of the plots with flowering plants, two plots (with 35 of the flowering plants) are located at Hegg Lake, a site managed by the Minnesota DNR, and one plots (with 8 flowering plants) is located at Eng Lake.
This recruitment experiment was originally established in 2000 to quantify seedling emergence and juvenile survival of Echinacea angustifolia during its reintroduction to sites with varying land-use history and burn schedules. Before 2014, detailed data was collected on each plant in the plots. Since 2014, we’ve censused each plot yearly to collect demographic data for every flowering plant.
Echinacea at Hegg Lake, photo by Wes Braker
Year started: Plantings in 2000-2002
Location: Ten study plots on state land with different land use histories: old-field and restored grassland.
Overlaps with: Demographic census in remnants
Data collected: Status, rosette count, flowering head count, GPS point for each flowering plant in each recruitment plot
Description: The Echinacea Project’s recruitment experiment examines the germination and survival of Echinacea angustifolia seedlings in oldfields and restored grasslands under different fire regimes. In 2014, Team Echinacea searched for and measured Echinacea plants in 60 study plots spread across 10 experimental blocks. After data collection was complete, we mapped all newly flowering plants. The goal of this study is to identify the environmental factors that influence the recruitment of seedlings and the long-term fitness of Echinacea plants.
Start year: 2001
Location: 10 experimental blocks located in oldfields and restored grasslands
Products: Raw data taken on paper were entered into database and verified. Flowering plants with new tags were mapped and the spatial data is located in the 2014 SURV files. Flowering plants with old tags were not mapped in 2014.
We started out the day doing what we do best: searching for seedlings in Experimental Plot 8 (a.k.a. Q2). Having braved formidable winds to plant them late last October, Stuart, Gretel, and Ruth were visibly relieved to see them pop up this spring. Since last week Team Echinacea has been diligently tracking down each seedling and “naming” them with colored toothpicks and row location coordinates, accurate to one centimeter.
In the afternoon we located and counted Echinacea in the recruitment experiment, a continuation of the project described in this paper. The procedure is really fun: we find the boundaries of the plots with metal detectors, triangulate points, then search within an area exactly the size of a regulation 175-gram Disc-craft Ultra Star disc (a.k.a. frisbee). Go CUT!
The best part of the day was tagging my first Echinacea. Maybe it just lost its old tag, but I like to think this is the first time this plant has ever born the silver badge. Sometime 10-12 years ago, this seed was planted. Now that it is finally about to flower, it has the honor of going down in history in the databases of the Echinacea Project, living out the rest of its life in the service of science. This 23rd of June, 3.65 m from the southwest corner and 0.79 m from the southeast corner of the northeast plot in Recruit 9, I named a flowerstalk “19061.” Isn’t it beautiful?
Doesn’t the flower head look ripe? Stuart says we may start to see flowering as early as the end of this week!
Eventually the time came to leave my new friend and join the rest of the team. This is where they were:
So, a while back when GPS-ing the recruitment plots, there were a number of places where no nail was found in our initial survey. Here’s the list of those point numbers in the GPS:
250
257
276
278
302
319
395
406
These were supposed to have nails, but we were unable to find them.
407
422
428
434
435
Last week was a busy and fun one for Team Echinacea 2012; no two days were the same. We wrapped up some of the first summer projects and started to transition into the second phase of the summer. We completed evaluating the recruitment plots, began to record their GPS locations, conducted demography and phenology observations in the common garden, and perhaps most notably, completed round one of seeding searches with the west (and recently burned) section of Staffanson prairie with help from Amy Dykstra, who came to visit on Friday. In addition to all the progress made on the long-term projects, we also spent multiple rainy mornings working on our individual research projects, the proposals for which have been recently, or will soon be posted here on the flog. Stuart Instructs us on the proper field techniques for cross-pollination, pollinator exclusion, and painting flowers so we can keep track of what we’ve just done.
After a short weekend, we started up working again this Monday with a morning dedicated to our independent projects, time which we all used to get out in the field and get our hands dirty. Ruth stopped by today and lent a hand and some very welcome advise, and joined the crew in the afternoon to do some weeding in the common garden. We clipped, pulled, and trimmed Buckthorn, Ash saplings, Birdsfoot Trefoil, Sweet Clover, and Sumac.
In a paper just published in Restoration Ecology, Echinacea Project researchers report that establishing Echinacea angustifolia in existing prairie restorations and abandoned agricultural fields requires more than 20 seeds for each plant that germinates and survives to flowering. Plants start flowering about 10 years after sowing. Also, burning the prairie before broadcasting seeds helps emergence and survival.
Wagenius, S., A. B. Dykstra, C. E. Ridley, and R. G. Shaw. 2012. Seedling recruitment in the long-lived perennial, Echinacea angustifolia: a 10-year experiment. Restoration Ecology 20: 352-359. Available here: https://echinaceaproject.org/pub/wageniusEtAl2012.pdf
I wrote this up last week, but neglected to post it on the flog. Here is a detailed protocol for the 2011 recruitment searches. See Wagenius et al. 2011* for a description of the seedling recruitment study.
