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All the first year researchers were assigned a study site to visit and observe. East Elk Lake Road, located in the northwest corner of the study area, is a small reserve that has not been actively maintained. The site lies just off a gravel road and consists of plants by the roadside, with a ditch and hillock that run for around 200 meters alongside the road. A wetland surrounded by trees lies at the western edge of the study site, and the trees are encroaching on the prairie fragment. The study site is across the road from a larger prairie fragment contributing to a larger gene pool. The site south of the road had similar plant diversity suggesting more active management.
This study site was characterized by three different sets of plants. The edge of the gravel road is disturbed and the flora consists of a high abundance of brome as well as dandelion and Poa. Just beyond the disturbed road edge is a shallow ditch and sloping hillside. This area contained the highest diversity of forbs, grasses and legumes, many of which are native. Grasses included big bluestem and needle and thread grass. There were many native forbs, including Canada anemone, goldenrod and bedstraw. This was the only area in which Echinacea (a clump of four individuals) was found. We also found asparagus plants, some of which looked ready to eat! While many legumes are found in most study sites, this site had a surprising few native and nonnative legumes. Leadplant also grew along the hillside. The top of the hillock was densely covered in nonnative brome, along with some relatively dense dogbane and prairie rose, but this area showed lower diversity than the hillside. This summit also featured tree saplings, no higher than five feet tall.
The size of woody trees and shrubs in the area and the large amount of duff on the hilltop suggests the site had not been burned for many years. Plant cover on the hilltop as well as an overgrown access road (we call this an approach) to the hilltop suggested the area had been used for grazing or farm fields.
 View West from approach with brome along the gravel road shown on the left
We had a great turnout for our annual lab potluck yesterday. Good times were had by all as we heard updates about what the lab accomplished this past year. Here are some highlights:
- This year, Bob and Aldo counted their 250,000th achenes. Anne counted her 400,000th, and Bill counted his 500,000th. Just yesterday morning, Lois, our reigning “achene queen,” counted her 700,000th!
- We finished doing all the hands-on work for 2014 and have already made great progress on cleaning and randomizing heads from the 2015 harvest.
- Stuart summarized progress and preliminary analyses of the qGen_a experiment, which tests for the heritability of fitness traits in Echinacea.
- The lab interns, Rachael, Gordon, Danny, and I, talked about our independent projects, all of which push the frontiers of science!
- We talked about plans for this summer. While Stuart, Gretel, and I head back to Minnesota, Danny and our citizen scientists will be busy in the lab cleaning last year’s (huge) harvest from Experimental Plot 2 and counting experiments from 2015. They’ll be joined by Chris, a MS student at Northwestern who will help get our (many) achenes organized for storage in the seed bank.
- There were too many tasty dishes to name all of the ones I enjoyed here. However, as a sampling, there was homemade spinach dip, mashed sweet potatoes, several broccoli dishes, iced tea, and a rhubarb crisp, which we polished off.
We took a group photo:
 First row (L to R): Aldo, Gretel, Lois, Shelley, Char, Stuart; Second row: Art, Amy, Susie; Third row: Danny, Sarah, Kathryn, Susan; Fourth row: Rachael, Gordon, Bill, Suzanne; Not pictured: Anne, Bob, Laura, Leslie, Marty, Sam, and interns Mackenzie, Keke, and Nina Thanks for coming, those of you who could make it, and for a great year!
Today and yesterday Katherine and I harvested most of the heads from P1 and P2! It’s an all day affair now that it’s just the two of us, but we enjoyed seeing how much progress we’ve made- many of the rows and all of the heads for Q3 are completely harvested! Today at P2 we had a picnic lunch in the field to maximize efficiency and enjoy the beautiful and clear fall day. I also gained a deeper understanding for just how caring of a person Katherine is. As we were harvesting she carefully ensured no bugs made it into the bag declaring, “Why must I have such a respect for the sanctity of all life!” as she herded another small bug back into its home at hegg. Unfortunately as we headed home, the truck didn’t quite start! Luckily, a kind passerby helped us jump it and after at the auto body shop we got to play with Bo, the friendly and pudgy yellow lab.
We started off today by receiving a post card from Ben! It’s addressed to all of Team Echinacea, so I urge everyone to return to read it in person (and so we can see you)! To say we were overjoyed would be an understatement, and it reminded us how much we miss our buddies who have returned home, to school, and to continue work in Chicago! Unfortunately as you can see from the pictures, some members were not so fortunate as to remain humans after the summer. So much time spent studying Echinacea has caused Gina to turn into an Echinacea and from eating too many cucumbers from the Wagenius’ garden, Ben has become a cucumber! We are impressed by how much this summer influenced our friends both academically, and physically.
 Katherine cuddles Bo while the car is expected!  Gina misses the project so much she’s turned herself into an Echinacea! We miss Ben, but we like him as a cucumber too
Happy Labor Day from Team Echinacea! We made the most of the long weekend by doing lots of traveling. Danny went to Evanston to move things in before he moves there in a few weeks. He brought lots of the heads we harvested last week in an effort to keep up with the volunteer’s fast-paced processing of our harvest thus far! Meanwhile, Katherine, Ali, and I went up to Ely, MN to visit a friend of mine who works at a camp up there. The camp was hosting a music festival this weekend with artists like Lucy Michelle, Jeremy Messersmith, and The Pines. We were very excited to see the rocks, trees, and varied topography of the region which were all very different from what we’ve been experiencing in Douglas County. On Saturday morning we went mushroom hunting with Jeremy Messersmith, who happens to be a big mushroom enthusiast. Who knew! Later that day we went paddle-boarding and kayaking on the lake, which was really fun. Then we watched the concert! Super good. We capped off the day with some square-dancing with our fellow concert-goers. A great day. Sunday was similar, with more awesome music in the afternoon. We drove back today taking a scenic route through some good Minnesota towns I hadn’t been to before like Hibbing, Grand Rapids, and Akeley, which is the birthplace of Paul Bunyan. Danny is still on his way back from Chicago now. Stuart will be working at the Garden for the week, so it’s just us kids here in charge of getting everything done this week. There’ll be lots of harvesting to do in the experimental plots as well as plenty of refinding the seedlings that Team Echinacea has kept track of over the past 6 years in the remnants.
 Us and Paul
Today, a sadly diminished Team Echinacea faced the renewed bout of heat/humidity without Gina, Will, or our fearless leader Stuart. It felt strange to arrive at the Hjelm House and not to see Will sitting in his usual spot at the picnic table. Despite being in Chicago, Stuart had plenty prepared for us to do. We started off the day with demo rechecks at Staffanson, which went quickly and smoothly thanks to our thorough work there last week. Then, while Ali, Abby and Amy harvested heads at P2 (they got about 20!) and Danny worked on the computer to prepare our afternoon tasks, Matt and I took the truck out to do demo at the last of the smaller sites, and just as importantly, to teach me how to drive stick! Ali and I are both learning to drive manual transmission this summer, because once Danny and Amy move to Chicago, the truck will be our only mode of transportation. Luckily for us, Matt is a very patient and calm teacher. Despite many engine revs, strange grinding noises, and that time I killed the engine in the middle of the road with two cars behind me, he made me feel capable and confident. I’m glad to be building yet another skill here in Minnesota!
After a lunch comprised mainly of yellow-jacket trap setting, we headed out to P1 to map the gopher mounds. Those pesky little varmints have completely overturned much of the northeast corner of the garden–we found 51 mounds total, 49 of which were in that area. Too bad Roxy isn’t here to do some gopher hunting! Finally, we headed back out to Staffanson, this time to demo and GPS the six nearest neighbors of certain plants on the transect. Although we were three tags short and therefore not able to quite finish the job, we found and GPS-ed all the plants we needed!
After work, we headed down to Morris to watch Abby’s first cross country meet of the season! Having all run cross country at some point in our lives, Amy, Ali and I were very excited to be there. And we’re so proud of Abby, our swift gazelle–hopefully our enthusiastic cheering didn’t embarrass her too much!
A gopher mound where an Echinacea should be 🙁 GO, ABBY, GO!!!
Here is everything that happened this weekend:
– We said goodbye to Gina as she heads home to New York for a week before starting class at Carleton. We miss you already Gina! Now there are only four of us living at the Town Hall.
– After we dropped Gina off at the Perkins where she caught her shuttle to the airport, Ali, Katherine, and I sobbed in the car for a while and then we went grocery shopping at Cub.
– We went back to Town Hall and congratulated ourselves on having already accomplished two items on our to-do list (drop off Gina, go grocery shopping) and rewarded ourselves by taking naps.
– Ali’s friend from school came and visited, and we went camping at Glacial Lakes State Park. Lots of nice prairie there! And lots of purple coneflower patches and magnets available for purchase at the park office. The only bad part about the park was that the interpretive signs had pictures of “native prairie plants” and had Echinacea purpurea listed.
– Ali taught me how to knit, and I made a yellow rectangle.
– Danny went to Northfield for the weekend and brought us back donuts from the Fireside Apple Orchard! Wow! Tis the season!
– I tried to make peanut butter but I burnt the peanuts so it was really gross. Ali made cucumber bread and it was pretty good; we ranked it 6 out of 10 would make again and 10 out of 10 would consume if starving.
– Watched the new T. Swift music video for the song “Wildest Dreams“: really beautiful scenery; she wears a brunette-wig and I’m kind of undecided about that.
It was a good weekend. Can’t believe it’s almost September!
Dear Reader: Before you embark on this adventure, may I recommend some easy listening? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc-P8oDuS0Q
This morning Abby, Gina, Katherine and I reluctantly returned to Loeffler’s Corner again to harvest heads. I say reluctantly because the last time this quad ventured to Loeffler’s it was to do demography rechecks. And that ended with us in the back of Abby’s car consoling our somewhat broken spirits with unroasted s’mores. However today with renewed spirits, we harvested with the vim and vigor of girls with clear hearts. In harvesting heads we knew we must take off everything, leaving nary a twist-tie in our wake. This ensures that heads can be uniquely identified, throughout the sorting process.
No longer beaten-down by Loeffler’s, we were far too young and clever to be confused by metal tags and dud flowers- no not us! Before getting in the van we cried too-ra-loo-ra, too-ra-loo-rye aye as we drove back to Hjelm house.
By the time we got back to Hjlem, Stuart had returned from his sojourn in Chicago! No longer do we wear beaten-down eyes sunk in smoke-dried faces, we were so happy to be reunited with Stuart. Abby could barely hold back a too-ra-loo-ra, too-ra-loo-rye aye she was so overjoyed, and Gina sang along and said she would surely hum this tune forever when she remembered the reunion. Who’d blame them for being glad, things round here have changed since Stuart’s been back and now we will have plenty of demo rechecks to do tomorrow!
The rest of the team spent the morning doing demo rechecks at Riley and East Riley, and sorting various harvest maps. They replaced many red twist-ties, because the red ties we put on plants at the beginning of the summer had lost their color and the poor old ties looked more clear than red! With each twist-tie added, members of Team Echinacea felt like they were putting pretty red dresses on the flowering plants.
At lunch, Gina talked about her findings from the aphid project. As Gina explained the statistics behind her analysis, I confess, I thought to myself: “Aah these things, I know they are real, but I swear what [s]he means could be said in plain english.” Stuart taught us how to explain our statistical results in language that is accessible to a broader audience, a valuable lesson for all scientists! Gina and Abby studied the same plants that were used in the 2012 aphid research and since then the plants have grown, so grown, and I must say now more than ever that there are more flowering than there were in the original data-set. To look at how more flowering plants may affect the data, the girls must come on out to P1 and assess herbivory on the cauline leaves. They were so resigned to what their fate was that they went straight to P1 after lunch to look at the leaves. These people round here really know how to tell a story of plant/insect interactions that captures the changes that occur in Echinacea populations over time.
After lunch, Katherine and I headed out to P1 to repaint Echinacea used in Q3 all the while humming Jonny Ray. Although his voice sounded sad on the radio, we can sing [his music] just like our fathers and that small comfort motivated us to do the best we could with the painting.
The Echinacea Project has taught me so much about teamwork, and at this moment, I remember that Katherine’s help means everything to me. You feel as if you can do the work alone, but when your hair verges on dirty, and you have shown weakness in the afternoon heat, it is your partner who will make you feel like saying too-ra-loo-ra, too-ra-loo-rye aye!
I look forward to the days when the Echinacea Project’s papers are as popular as Dexy’s Midnight Runners, a band who moved a million albums in mono. In the mean time, we spend our time fighting off hornets here at Hjelm House, unrecognized heros in the world of evolutionary ecology.
Eileen- rendered in lunch
Today marked our third day without Stuart. But our arrival to a Stuart-less Hjelm house was made brighter by the appearance of a tiger salamander! (In Roxy’s absence, we’ve noticed quite a bounty of wildlife roaming the area.) Katherine, who has known since the age of 8 that the majestic and bafflingly cute creature is her favorite animal, was especially excited. After an extended photo op and cuddling session, the team finally managed to set the salamander back down and get on with the day’s work. We all agreed that he was an upgrade from Ricky.
Katherine holds her first tiger salamander! Obvious soulmates. We spent most of the morning doing demography at the Rileys. Despite some grief and hardship caused by the abundance of mowed plants, we finished strong and well before lunch. Back at the Hjelm house we set to work cleaning and organizing, dealing with clutter that had been neglected for too long. Things got really exciting when Amy dug out the label maker. We spent lunch dreaming up big plans to label everything in the Hjelm house–in between fighting off the hornets.
The Hjelm house is looking pretty good. After lunch, Will and I collected tissue samples from the Cirsium hillii at Hegg (that will be used to determine if the plants are distinct or actually one large plant) while Abby and Danny collected tissue from the angustifolia plants nearby the pallida restoration. Meanwhile, Katherine, Ali, and Amy stayed back to touch up the paint jobs on the heads for q3.
Our work done at Hegg, we headed back to Hjelm and packed away the tissue samples to dry out. We printed labels for the samples, but unfortunately the label maker ran out of paper before we could get on with the rest of our big labeling plans. Oh well. We’ll have to continue to do our best navigating the house with its very average level of labeling.
Heads for q3 wait in p1 to be harvested.
Today when we arrived at the Hjelm house it was only 50 degrees! Brrrrrr! We were also down to a team of six following Ben’s last day on Friday and Stuart and Gretel heading back to Illinois over the weekend. (Abby was gone for her senior pictures). With so few people we got off to a quick start, because we knew we would need all the time we could get to get as much done with fewer crew members.
Our skeleton crew headed out to p2 to continue measuring that we started last Thursday. It was slow going but, having gotten through the thickest of the flowering plants on Thursday it was faster than it could have been. It is always windy at p2 since it is on top of a hill but today was especially windy and cold, most crew members could barely feel their hands which made entering data on the visor a challenge. We managed to get by, completing 20 rows before heading in for lunch.
After a warm up with some hot chocolate at lunch we headed out to do various things in the afternoon. Danny, Amy, Gina and I went to harvest heads in the remnants based on a sampling method that Danny and Amy developed. Ali and Katherine rechecked some funky measurements in p1 and harvested a few of the heads that will be used in the q3 experiment (exciting!). Amy and I went to a ton of different remnants and encountered a few problems, like at Stevens approach were most of the heads were mowed. The highlight of our afternoon was at Aanenson where we met a really friendly cow named Willow! she came up to the fence and let us pet her. Her not-so-outgoing friends were hesitant and we didn’t pet them. Willow even gave Amy’s hand a lick, “it felt really weird” said Amy shortly after the licking. Sadly we could not spend all afternoon with our new friend and went to continue harvesting.
Willow the cow investigates her new, soon-to-be friends, Will and Amy Willow’s friends investigate us from afar, clearly not as outgoing or cool as Willow.
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