fun stuff « The Echinacea Project

Could it be?

There’s something going on with the grasses in the common garden. I’m not sure whether it’s crown rust, but it might be.

Bee Killer Behind Bars; Claims to Have Been Railroaded

Hello, all! This is Denise. =D =D

Lani and I are starting our posters. We’re doing one that targets the field work and one that targets the lab work. We’re hoping to fill it up with mostly photos like this:

Since I got back, I’ve been staying at Carey’s house. His step-mom has a garden, and guess what I recognized? ECHINACEA! Loads and loads. ^o^ Anyway, we saw a sickly plant in her garden and were hoping for some feedback as to what it could be. There’s some discoloration on the leaves and the heads don’t look too healthy as well. Here are some photos:

=( Unhappy echinacea, yes. What could it be?

Here are some other plants from another part of her garden that look much better:

^_^

More Common Garden Invertebrates

Last week’s scandal recedes from the public eye following the disappearance of two bees from the south end in broad daylight on Thursday. Common Garden residents are now locking their doors and speculating about the identity of the killer in their midst. Well….. not all of them.

Team Chicago home safe

Hi all,
Lani, Denise and I are back in Chicago safe and sound. After such a rainy start to the day overall the drive was smooth and even included a Disney sing along. My reunion with my puppy, Raven, was filled with lots of jumping and tail wagging.

Photo of Raven from before I left for Minnesota…tried to take one tonight but she was too hyper.

Ben, Lecia, and Julie, I had a great time working with all of you and I wish you the best of luck in your future ecological endeavors. Everyone else I will see you back in Chicago or in Minnesota in the near future. Have a great rest of the summer Team Echinacea and we will keep you posted on our progress here in Chicago.
Jennifer

Half-way through the summer

Today marks the halfway point for the summer. Five weeks down, five to go. We’ve accomplished a lot and much more remains. After a long afternoon of measuring plants, we had some watermelon and carbonated beverages to cool off, mark the 1/2way, and wish the Chicagoans well.

Three of our team members are leaving tomorrow for Chicago (Jennifer, Lani & Denise). They will keep us posted about the analysis of the bee-tracking field data and how it relates to their pollen flow study.

Here’s a photo of us on the porch of the Hjelm house today, just after lunch.

Lecia, Ben, Megan, Christine, Denise & Gretel
Julie, Jennifer, Lani. Amy & Stuart.

Excitement on the prairie

It was an exciting day on the prairie. After a soaking morning rain, it felt hot and steamy. Just before noon the plants started flaunting their pollen and the bees took advantage. There was plant sex and bee sex and Team Echinacea jumped into the fray trying to keep up with the frenzied activity. Every team-member broke a sweat trying to keep up with all the bees. It was a crazy scene and the excitement in the air was palpable. The bees eventually outmaneuvered and outlasted us, but we had a great time. We left around 12:50 looking forward to another exciting day.

Unlike most of the shy bees, this rascal loved the cameras. She gave quite a show flying from head to head, daring us to follow. We caught her here spreading pollen all over her legs.

Bee photos

I just posted photos of prairie insect specimens from our collection, including many bees that pollinate Echinacea. Enjoy!

Here’s a photo of a specimen of Andrena rudbeckiae (Female). Click to enlarge.

So, there is a lot more to do to improve the web interface to these photos. Let me know your suggestions!

The pages are static html right now. Bianca, CBG science web design hero, made a dynamic version using MySQL and PHP. Her way is the way to go. However we don’t have a good permanent home for a MySQL database: UMN won’t allow phpMyAdmin, Bianca’s software of choice. And CBG doesn’t really support websites for scientists (yet).

More photos will follow and we’ll post more info for each specimen too. I hope to make these update when we have a dynamic, public site, but wanted to get something out now because I am submitting a paper that refers to these specimens.

busy day

We had a busy day today. Reinforcements arrived to help on all of our projects. Ruth Shaw (U of MN) helped with phenology, bee tracking, PX caging, collecting pollen and crossing. Elliott Graham (Madison, WI) helped with bee tracking and PX caging. Jack Kiefer (Wadsworth, IL) is leading the plumbing initiatives and made progress on several fronts including connecting the main water line to the Hjelm house!

Great forward progress on a sultry day. Well, in late afternoon it was still with air temp of 85 degrees F and a dewpoint of 57 degrees F.

Thanks to all for a great day!

Flowering Echinacea plants in the Common Garden

Less than 10% of the heads that we think will flower this season had started flowering as of Sunday. Flowering is so late this year! We’ll walk through the Garden systematically tomorrow (Tuesday) to see what’s new. It’s possible one head (49.33 946.33 grn) will be done flowering tomorrow.

There’s always something new and exciting going on when Team Echinacea is in full swing. After we all pitch in to assess flowering phenology tomorrow, Amy will work on her large-scale crossing experiment that requires erecting pollinator exclusion cages, collecting pollen & hand crossing. The fun doesn’t end there. We are tiling and plumbing the Hjelm House, photographing floral development on Echinacea heads, measuring plants at the Hegg Lake CG and the main CG, taking ladder-high aerial photography of flowering plants in the prairie remnants, and chasing bee pollinators in the CG. And that’s just tomorrow!

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Experiments