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I was recently informed that Daniel Rath has been “outblogging” me on the FLog, and I agree, he has– but it stops now. Daniel updates the FLog several times a week, and that’s cool. So from now on, every post Daniel posts, I too will post a post. Plus one.
Consider this a challenge, Daniel Rath!
To make up for lost time, and because if you’re anything like my mom (and you might be my mom– hi mom!) you love photos, here is a visual record of the past two days.
1) The past two mornings have been surprisingly cold here in K-town! Around 11:00 AM the truck bed has absorbed enough heat for a really fine cuddle.
2) On the way back from the ’99 South garden, Gretal (Queen Bee) and I saw a little hummingbird trying to run with the big dogs (some swallows) atop the telephone line.
3) In the end, he was a bit of an outcast.
4) Today many of us went to the landfill to practice our independent project techniques (characterizing floral neighborhoods, catching pollinators, collecting pollen from non-Echinacea flowers, etc). I expected a dump, but I found a wonderland– just see for yourselves!
Don’t be fooled, it’s not Italy- it’s a DUMP. In Kensington!!
Mimi couldn’t imagine what good deed could have landed her in such a place!
Then we found this Prairie Lily (Lilium Philidelphicum)
We got pulled over by this cop, and she made us characterize a floral neighborhood!
There was also some flowering Leadplant (Amorpha canescens)
I will post again soon about how my independent project plans are shaping up, so stay tuned. Don’t forget to leave feedback in the comments!!
Edit: Click on the photos if you’d like a slightly larger image.
Can you match up the Team Echinacea member with his or her handle, that is, the alias used over the walkie talkie radios? Answers to be posted later this week …
The real deal
Amy
Daniel
Kate
Caroline
Mimi
Allegra
Stuart
Greg
Amanda
Gretel
The clever handle
GT
Penguin
Joker
Queen Bee
RoboCop
Yea Mon
Drone
Monster
Legos
Riddler
In an attempt to outflog the rest of the team, I will describe what we did today. In the morning, most of us collected data for the phenology exp. No new plants had flowered, but some mistakes were caught in the flagging of positions from yesterday. I saw one of the large Halictid bees going to town on one of the flowering heads.Then until about 1, most of us headed out to the landfill site with different tasks in mind. I needed to do a test run of the FNC (I get tired of writing out floral neighborhood characterization) to see what obstacles we are going to face and about how long each one will take. Amanda helped me ID plants and test out the general protocol and it took about five minutes but there only 4 co-flowering species–Amorpha canascens, toothed evening primrose, Phlox pilosa, and Northern Bedstraw. Some species are more difficult to quantify in terms of number, such as Galium. After some discussion with Stuart, I think we will probably count each inflorescence as 1 “unit” so that counting the number of co-flowering species will be systematic and consistent. And now for more pretty pictures: 
Above: Glacial Lakes State Park trip, only a half hr away!
A plant we couldn’t ID. Help?
Old Runestone Day Parade pics, Per & Hattie the candy gatherers
Team Echinacea had a busy week last week.
We finished seedling searches in the remnants.
We found ~22 spittle bugs masses in the CG.
We talked a lot about plans for many projects and started organizing and practicing.
We ordered supplies.
On Thursday afternoon we pulled and cut thistles in the CG.
We started and finished the “recruitment experiment.” This experiment started off as the “recruitment experiment.” I hand broadcast seeds in fall ’00, ’01, and ’02 in plots with different burn treatments. Now we are assessing plant survival. (We need a better name for this experiment.) Last year there were over 820 plants alive. After a quick scan of the datasheets, I think 9 plants will flower this year. Wow, much less than 1%! These plants are taking a long time to flower. After entering data, Amy will give a detailed summary of our findings this year. Notes for next year: improve datasheets for entering fl pla info, avoid searching at empty spots, & map plants using tripod system.
On Friday the first plant in the CG started to flower — one floret started male phase. We saw the pollen. No plants started on Saturday and on Sunday 3 plants started to flower.
So, *drum roll please*
Here are the possible candidates for the remnants that I will be looking at this summer.
In no particular order, I will pick 7 out of:
KJs
NW of Landfill
Landfill
Krusemark
East of Town Hall
Aanenson
Randt
Yellow Orchard Hill
Nessman
Depending on what Amy needs for her seedling searches, I can adjust accordingly, but these sites should give a good cross-section of isolated prairie remnants and well populated ones. Tomorrow, we will spend another hour searching for spittlebugs in the common garden, and hopefully enough will be found for a sufficient sample size. Phenology has also started in the common garden, and we have 4 plants that are flowering so far, with hopefully more by tomorrow.
We went out to the Glacial Lakes reserve today for a hike, and it was incredibly beautiful. We took lunch and hiked all afternoon, seeing some flowering Echinacea, noticing a bumblebee on one of the flowering Echinacea, and stopping every 5 minutes to look at a new plant. We even did a few seedling searches! (Stuart has trained us well….)
Hi all–“Joker” here. I just spent some time reading all the flog entries from this month–I think I am caught up now! I really enjoyed reading your project proposals, and hearing about them on Friday. I’m excited about what we are going to learn this summer about aphids, ants and spittlebugs, and about floral neighborhoods, pollinators, pollen competition, etc. Good stuff! I’m also looking forward to sharing my experimental plans with the team.
Since I’m not in K-town for the weekend, I thought you might need a joke to tide you over. Here’s the latest from our daily redneck calendar: You might be a redneck if you think re-booting your computer means kicking it twice. 🙂
There was a nice steady rain this afternoon at the farm. Although the National Weather Service says we accumulated less than 0.1 in, I think the plants will take full advantage of precipitation in this unusually dry season.
Point precipitation map for Minnesota June 24, 2009
We finished searching for seedlings at the last site (Staffanson Prairie Preserve) on Monday. All the datasheets & maps (163 pages) are now organized in a 3-ring binder.
Here are a few highlights:
We found total of …
> 22+1+5+1+8+2+24+4+13+0+5+7+1+0
[1] 93
… ninety-three seedlings at fourteen sites!
In August we’ll go back and check the fate of every one of those seedlings. I hope we can find them all!
Mimi, Amanda, Greg, Allegra, Daniel, Caroline, and Gretel
looking for seedlings on the scraped roadside at Riley’s site.
(They didn’t find any here.)
Two possible Echinacea seedlings (not counted above) were noted. We should go back to check their identity within the next week. At site NWLF we left a pin flag at focal plant #13073. At site ERI the possible Echinacea seedling was at R102 (see page 97). Help me remember to check these!
We found about 500 other Echinacea plants within the circles, mostly juvenile plants and some adults (flowering and not).
> 16+16+25+131+63+33+73+24+46+5+16+46+6+11
[1] 511
The roadsides at sites ER and ERI were scraped. In the area that was scraped, all the tags are gone. We did see many little Echinacea leaves peeking through the gravel, but no seedlings. In some areas the scraping was deeper and some roots of old plants were pulled out. I collected one pulled root from the S side of the road on the W half of RI; I couldn’t tell from where it was yanked.
The root was huge!
With our very precise maps of plants from previous years, we will be able to identify which plants are gone and which persist. It will be a challenge though. In some dense areas we may not be able to figure it out. Stay tuned, we’ll bring the detailed maps and try to figure it all out in August, after peak flowering.
Gretel determining the identity of individual Echinacea plants
at the scraped roadside at Riley’s.
The scraped gravel was piled in the ditches. Some plants in the ditches were buried and I expect that many of them will die. There will probably be a lot of weeds in and around those piles for the next few years (until the perennials take over again). 
Two images (above & below) of the piles of gravel deposited
in the ditch on the S side of the road at Riley’s.
Another highlight (no photos though):
It was a pleasure to visit Staffanson. Gretel and I mapped the focal locations on Sunday and saw a patch of Cypripedium calceolus in flower (past prime). Almost every focal plant in the West unit (unburned) had spittlebug spittle on it. Almost none of the focal plants in the East unit (burned) had spit.
We didn’t use the tripod to take photos. The camera didn’t attach well and the remotetrip feature isn’t ready yet. We’ll need to work on the tripod and practice using it. I think it holds great potential to speed up and improve our protocol.
Those are just 2 of the many cool encounters I had yesterday on my bike ride past Hegg Lake and through Runestone Park. I also saw: pelicans, an American egret, a hare, tons of red-winged blackbirds and many other birds I can’t yet identify, a wild turkey, a skink, and lots of interesting pollinators. I also saw some flowering Echinacea along the side of the road…I think Stuart probably knows about them (?) but I didn’t see any tags and there ones that had flowered last year as well.
I thought I’d also flog the decisions we’d made last week about chores. The tasks are:
>sweep daily: G3–Mimi, the front porch–Allegra, and inside–Gretel
>clean the table tops and put away chairs daily–Amanda
>organize the bins and flags in G3 daily–Daniel
>shake out the rugs once a week–Amanda
>clean the bathroom once a week–?
-Mimi
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