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Well, I was the last to arrive this summer, same as last summer. With the help of my lovely parents I was able to pack all of my plug trays (18) into my 2007 New Beetle. I have attached pictures of this amazing feet.
After a 9hr drive, I arrived in Kensington and finally met the rest of the group. We have a great team this summer, so that makes everything better.
Unlike last summer, I got to enjoy Runestone days in Kensington this year, which was very fun. We watched the parade, and I think it was the longest parade I’ve ever witnessed, which is ironic because Kensington is the smallest town I’ve ever lived in for any period of time. I think other floggers will be posting parade pictures, but I would just like to note that the giant Norse ship with the mini-vikings inside (i.e. kids dressed as vikings, shiny swords and all) was my favorite part.
Anyway, today is Monday, so back to the grindstone. To do:
1) Seed sorting. (I know the many CBG volunteers are helping to sort seeds for me back in Chicago. I will be doing my share here in the evenings.)
2) Measuring plants. Hopefully I can find a partner or two to work on this with me.
3) Organize my planting locations and get them ready to go.
Other work:
4) FNC ordination (still working on this)
5) Work on style persistence data
6) Call Amanda and chat about the “little aster” issue…
Well that should keep me busy. Attached are some pictures and last years Cookbook.
Ech2009Cookbook.doc
-Kate
We had a pretty eventful weekend with the Runestone festival going on in K-town! We checked it out Friday night and saw fireworks, had a pancake breakfast Sat morning (all except Ian), talked to the locals, and had fun sniffing candles at the crafts fair. Then on Sunday we watched the parade and biked to the lake in Hoffman!
-Katie
I’m back! You may have noticed all my photo links are broken… well, that website is dead and I can’t edit my old posts. I’ll go back through and comment on my posts with pictures with updated links so you can have a clue as to what’s going on.
I now keep a (nearly) daily photo blog on Blipfoto and will do weekly posts linking all of the photos from that week, along with other photos and posts as necessary.
As for my project this season, I’m interested in looking at the effects of humidity on the awns of Hesperostipa spartea (aka Stipa spartea. thanks, plant geneticists). The current idea is to construct some sort of variable-humidity chamber with a humidity guage readable by time-lapse photography. I expect this will involve a sealed chamber and a humidifier, dehumidifier, and some way to control them powering on and off. The seeds will be in the chamber, digging through artificial duff or maybe just looking at how the awns curl.
Happily I am back in the Kensington Town Hall- all is well.
For the new in the crew – I teach 9-12 science at Great Plains Lutheran High in Watertown, SD. It is just over a 130 miles away. I am on my 2nd summer at Team Echinacea and will be here Mondays and Tuesdays (typically) to help the project and work on my own investigations.
I am amazed at the difference between the stages of growth throughout the several remnants and the SPP (Staffanson Prairie Preserve) this year compared to last. I would venture it is about 2-3 weeks farther along than it was last year at this time. It is different to see SPP without being burned this spring. The Hjelm house is seeing improvements as well.
GREG
Yesterday, Janelle G. and Shelby F. helped me do the May census on the Hegg Lake plot of my local adaptation experiment. There were some surprises, including 3 or 4 NEW seedlings!
Another surprise was a visit from this fawn.
Another interesting discovery was a cluster of egg sacs. Anybody know what critter would leave these?
Today and tomorrow we plan to census the two South Dakota plots that are part of this experiment.
With the early spring we’ve been having in Minnesota, I was curious about whether the Echinacea plants were sprouting. My husband and I made a day-trip out to Douglas County last Saturday (May 1). I did a quick check of my crossing experiment plot at Hegg Lake. I found some of the toothpicks we used to mark seedlings last summer, along with some of the plants–which are now a year old. I plan to do a complete census in another couple of weeks.
We also stopped by the common garden. Here’s one of the plants–already quite a bit of growth on the first of May.
And while I’m back visiting the field blog, here are a handful of photos from the Stipa planting at the end of the summer.
I received the camera today so I had to test it out since the opportunity presented itself. The picture is taken through a stereomicroscope at 45x magnification of a live amphipod from the Big Sioux River. On a qualitative stream survey, we found our water to be very clean. So the camera isn’t just for live pollen anymore. School is going well. I find myself saying “protocol” instead of lab instructions sometimes. Must be a remnant from the prairie.
Hello,
I made it to the fourth day of school without taking my class outside to the nearest prairie remnant (the hill above the river in town)
It took very little time for them to learn to recognize ech. deadheads and rosa arkansana (rose hips). Some were even able to find basal ech. plants. (without offering 6-packs of pop as bait)
Howdy gang!
Here’s the list of tag ID’s and corresponding letters at the sites used this summer. We flagged different plants on 7/13 and 7/6 and used the same plants for observations on 7/21 and 7/23. For some reason I can’t find the list of flagged plants for 7/13, so it would be great if someone could check on the Hjelm house computer for that info. It may or may not be in the folder for this experiment. I’m sure I compiled that info from the visor memos, but I don’t have the file on my computer.
ech flagged plants and tags.doc
We recorded the tag ID’s during FNC so we could go back and check to make sure we had recorded the right number, but we never made the check.
Here’s the file that lists whether the vial had a bee, fly, bfly, or beetle in it:
ECH poll obs ALL.xls
Here’s the FNC Data in an excel file:
ECH FNC.xls
I hope everything’s going well in MN! It sounds like lots of progress has been made since I left. I thought my poster presentation went pretty well back in Chi-town. The final version of it is in a previous flog post. Thanks again to everyone…I certainly could not have done this without all of your help. I hope the field season ends well. Keep in touch. Oh and here’s an interesting paper I came across recently: brown bj loosestrife comp.pdf
And I really like this picture Daniel took:
And here’s Echinacea taking center stage at CBG:
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