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Today was a cool day! High temp of mid 70s.
Ruth and Amy came up from the Twin Cities, to give us a jumpstart to Seedling Refinds.
We overcame some technical hurdles with DroppedBoxx on Sulu and Chekov (our two lovely GPS units), and started seedling refinds at Steven’s Approach in the morning, worked way past lunch hour before Stuart called timeout.
We had lunch supplemented generously with bounty from the Wagenius family garden – juicy chestnut crabapples, ripe sweet cantaloupe, and cool yellow watermelon!
After lunch we stopped by the road outside CG2/Jennifer’s Plot at Hegg Lake, and harvested Bouteloua. We will broadcast the Bouteloua seeds in CG2 after the burn if DNR decides to burn the plot; otherwise we will broadcast half the seeds in the fall and half in spring.
Then we resumed seedling refinds at Steven’s Approach. We solved some tricky mysteries with the seedling maps, and completed Steven’s Approach! We also found a couple of flowering plants that had been missed during demo.
While we were doing all that, Karen was working hard at her independent project. The searching and keying paid off as she found a third species of Helianthus, H. tuberosus, at Hegg Lake.
Here’s an unrelated picture of a pheasant’s nest near my Dichanthelium plot. The pheasant mum and I often startled each other during those mornings when I did fieldwork.
Look, a pheasant egg!
And I know you’ll forgive me for posting yet another picture of Dichanthelium 😀
Hi all, Maria at K-town.
It was raining this morning as we bade goodbye to Lydia. All the best to Lydia as she prepares to go to Ireland for study abroad! Here’s a great picture to remember the fun times in the prairie 😀
Karen arrived at the town hall yesterday evening! This morning, she braved the rain and went out to many prairie remnants to look for Helianthus. She reports that Riley, Staffanson and Hegg Lake seem to hold the best promise for her pollen limitation experiments with H. maximiliani and H. pauciflorus, and maybe another H. species, if she can find it.
Andrew arrived back from his weekend trip announcing that he had all the food that’s bad for you all in one day. He, Shona, and Jill went to watch Alladin, the play by the Prairie Fire Children’s Theatre that Per and Hattie were in. They enjoyed it very much!
The skies gradually cleared up though temps were still in 60s-70s. It was quite chilly in the town hall.
With the squash, zucchini, and cucumber explosion 😀 😀 :D, Shona made zucchini bread. We also welcomed Kelly’s return from Northbrook about an hour ago.
Lastly, here’s a beautiful photo of Dichanthelium with morning dew:
Howdy folks,
Maria reporting from K-town.
Sunday we had a real day off =)
The weather was good and sunny, but not too hot.
Random tidbits from the town hall:
Shona made oatmeal pancakes for breakfast – they were really yummy – thanks Shona!
Kelly and Shona went swimming at Elk Lake and bumped into the Wagenius family
Katherine found a new trail in the forest at the Runestone Park on her biking adventure
Andrew had a great time at home and arrived at the town hall before 11pm
Lydia spent the day helping out in the kitchen at the camp in Alexandria
I made Irish Soda Bread to use up some sour milk, but still have ~1 cup sour milk (turned into buttermilk substitute, any ideas what to do with it? Pancakes would be easiest, but we just had them)
After the weekend break, it’s time for work again! Monday (today) we divided and conquered.
AM – Greg set out his yellow pan traps in his remnants. Stuart, Katherine, Jill, Lydia and I did demo in the remnants. Ruth and Greg came to join us. We found many Echinacea flowering at Loeffler’s Corner East, an okay number at Loeffler’s Corner West, 2 at Railroad Crossing (Douglas County), and ~6 at Yellow Orchid Hill.
The others (Shona, Kelly, Andrew) did CG1 rechecks and then worked on their independent projects.
Ruth bought some delicious fluffy spongy chocolate cake which we cleaned off the dish.
PM – The two teams switched jobs. Stuart led Shona, Kelly, Andrew, Ruth and Greg in demo at KJs and On 27. The rest of us did CG1 rechecks, and then worked on independent projects.
Here’s a file called “Crash Course in R”, which might be helpful to folks
crashR.2.pdf
Now for some photos!
Flowering Dichanthelium!
I think this is a super cool picture as it shows 3 stages of Dichanthelium stigmas/anthers emergence. See how the bottom-most spikelet has the stigma just emerging, while the anthers are still inside; the middle spikelet is open and has both stigma and anthers well-exserted; and the top spikelet is closed and the anthers are drooping out from the spikelet.
Last but not least here’s an epic picture from our bonfire last year 😀
Saturday brought a resurgence of the “not-so-bad” weather we’ve been enjoying this week. Several rainstorms have brought some much needed moisture to the soil. The reason I mention this is that while I worked on my aphid addition/exclusion experiment, I noticed a lot of dirt mounds on plants where aphids were present. Presumably, ants build these structures to cultivate aphids. Some of these were small, consisting of only a few small pieces, and some were large, taking up a large portion of a leaf. Here’s one of the smaller examples. The opposite side of the leaf was covered in aphids.
Here’s a picture of one of the plants in my aphid addition group. As you can see, the ants are taking full advantage of the situation:
As for other field work, Kelly spent the morning checking the status of flowers for her phenology study. Most of the remnants have stopped flowering, with the exception of one plant at a small remnant and many at the Staffanson prairie preserve. Because the west half of Staffanson was burned in May, Echinacea began blooming later than in the unburned half.
In the evening, we all gathered at the Wagenius family home for potluck dinner and bonfire. I should say bonfires, since there were two right next to each other. Pyromanic desires were fulfilled by all.
Hi guys,
Saturday morning i woke up at 6am (body clock working on weekday schedule) and couldn’t go back to sleep, so i decided to watch the approaching storm, from the safety of the front door of the town hall. Saw some really interesting things that will sound like they were right from a children’s book but it was all true.
The sky was a strange yellow glow. i’m guessing it’s because of the sunrise before a storm. In the north and northwest direction, there were dark clouds and low rumbling thunder in the background. But in the opposite direction, birds were chirping incessantly. The sun was literally gleaming above the dilapidated barn house. I saw a rabbit prancing across the neighbor’s front yard. I watched as storm clouds in the west covered and uncovered a double rainbow. Gradually the storm clouds moved from north to south. Some pattering of rain, and cool lightning chases in the north/northwest, accompanied by louder thunder.
Around 6.50 i went back to bed. Jennifer was already up – she was going to meet Stuart at the Hjelm House at 8, and then go to Caribou Coffee in Alexandria to work on her manuscript for the whole day.
Later in the morning, Katherine went to the common garden to do her aphids experiment, which took all day.
Taking advantage of the cool temperature (high 70s with 10mph wind), Jill went out for a run at 10 and I went out for a slow jog at 11. Lydia, Andrew and Kelsey (Andrew’s special friend) went to Alexandria around noon – Andrew was showing Kelsey around. Kelly, Shona, and Jill went to the Starbuck beach in the afternoon and had lots of fun. Apparently there was lake itch at the first beach they went to but they found another beach on the same lake that didn’t have the itch.
In the evening, Kelly and Shona went out for a run before going to Alexandria to watch The Dark Knight Rises. Andrew and Kelsey joined them at the movies.
Oh, and the obligatory picture. My camera got really wet in the rain (i foolishly put it in my raincoat pocket), so it’s retired from service for now. But I still have tons of good pictures from this summer and the last, so no worries.
This was from the day of the storm. The yellow glow I was talking about. That’s my bike parked outside my field site at Hegg Lake.
And this is a really cool bug I found on Dichanthelium. It can climb vertically and upside down very well, and it seems to have suction pads on its feet. Photo courtesy of Lydia.
Maria
This past weekend a group of us went over to Glacial Lakes State Park for some hiking and a change of scenery (i.e. trees). During our hike we passed a few sections of remnant prairie, evident by the presence of lead plant (Amorpha canescens). One of these had what appeared to be a flowering Echinacea angustifolia. Due to a combination of curiosity and habit, I walked over to check the plant for aphids. Sure enough, there they were:
They looked like Aphis echinaceae, though they were slightly bigger than the aphids I’ve seen around here. The reason I mention this is that the specimens for Aphis echinaceae were collected in our field sites throughout Douglas County. Glacial Lakes State Park is a little under 30 miles away. I didn’t collect any aphids, but I thought it was an observation worth sharing.
Monday was quite sultry, if I remember correctly. In the morning we divided forces to look at flowering phenology in C1 and to finish measuring the plants in Amy Dykstra’s experiment at Hegg Lake. She has two experimental plots there: one containing the offspring of inter-remnant crosses and the other containing seeds collected from source populations between Minnesota and South Dakota. She sowed seeds in 2008 and has been tracking their progress every year since. Once we finished finding and measuring plants, Stuart took GPS points for each experimental plot:
While he was doing that, Shona trekked off into the prairie to check on the plants in her hybridization experiment.
Meanwhile, Lydia and I waited by the truck and took advantage of the opportunity for an epic pose. I’d say it was successfully epic.
Friday the 13th of July! Sorry for the late posting.
Weather report:
According to my field notes, at 6.35am at Hegg Lake it was warm, no breeze, and a little dewy. The rest of the day, it was hot and humid, though not as bad as the past few days.
Fieldwork report (morning):
I was at Hegg Lake from 6.35am-10.30am, checking on my Dichanthelium plants for seeds that are ready to be harvested. The unfortunate news: 1 of my experimental culms dried out, and another culm was broken off 🙁 On the brighter side, the potted Dichanthelium from my pilot bulk experiment are doing quite well, and a second one started producing spikelets!
Kelly and Shona were out at Staffanson GPSing all the flowering Echinacea plants, including Kelly’s phenology plants.
Andrew and Lydia were in C1 observing and catching pollinators for Andrew’s project. Lydia caught one pollinator. There wasn’t much activity in the garden.
Jill was identifiying ants under the dissecting scope in the basement all morning. She found that many of them were Lasius and Formica.
Katherine was working with the data from the aphid survey and conducting preliminary analyses. She is planning on performing aster analysis with her data.
Ruth, Amy and Brad came over today. After lunch, we headed out to Hegg Lake to Amy’s plots where we measured seedlings that were sowed in 2008. We were out there until almost 6pm, impressive work!
Stuart and Ruth 🙂
Poor broken culm of Dichanthelium. See how some spikelets were still open?
Tired Team Echinacea…
After last week’s sultry weather, we’ve been enjoying a “dry heat”, as Greg Diersen so artfully put it. This morning everyone went their separate ways to pursue their individual projects:
Shona, Maria, and Lydia went directly to Hegg Lake and combined forces to measure plants and take GPS points. Shona also photographed Echinacea pallida and E. angustifolia plants as part of her project to assess species traits.
Andrew searched the main experimental plot (C1) for plants where he can observe pollinators. Because peak flowering has passed, his selection of flowering heads is growing slimmer by the day. Fortunately, he has some good observations under his belt and will be able to collect more before plants stop flowering.
Jill and Greg joined forces in operation pit-fall trap. Greg’s traps are bowls full of soapy water that he sets on the ground and leaves out for a couple of days. Jill’s are tubes full of propylene glycol that she submerges in the soil and leaves out for a week. Today, they set out Greg’s traps and collected from Jill’s. I have to say: the smell of dead insects stewing in propylene glycol for a week is probably one of the worst smells I have experienced.
I spent the morning removing aphids from plants in my aphid addition/exclusion experiment. Even though it has been three days since my last exclusion, there were aphids on 11 out of 50 plants in my exclusion group. One plant had 67 aphids–all in three days! Those aphids are moving and breeding fast.
This afternoon we joined together in our common goal of measuring every plant in C1. My mother used to say that the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Well, today we bit a big chunk off of our elephant, finishing up the sections planted in 1997, 1998, and 1999. We have less than half an elephant to go!
And now for a picture. In addition to helping us keep track of plants, pin flags make great habitat for spiders:
We were all having so much fun on the 4th of July that I forgot to write the events of the day.
Technically, the 4th of July is a day off for the Echinacea crew. Plants don’t celebrate national holidays, so we spent the morning assessing flowering phenology in the main experimental plot. After that, Andrew experienced a series of unfortunate events that kept him from observing pollinators. On the upside, he learned some valuable lessons and made a new friend.
Because aphids don’t take holidays either, I spent the latter part of the morning visiting plants in my aphid addition/exclusion experiment to remove aphids from the exclusion group. The goal of my experiment is to capture the effects of aphids in natural conditions–i.e. no cages or bags. That means that in order keep aphids off of the plants in the exclusion group, I need to visit them every few days to remove them by hand. For fifty plants (plus fifty more in the addition group) that’s a lot of footwork.
We celebrated America’s national holiday with a picnic at Elk Lake. We crammed in as many all-American activities as we could: potlucking, canoeing, sand-castle building, frying in the sun. If things weren’t American enough, Stuart brought a print-out of the Declaration of Independence, which we all took turns reading around the picnic blanket. Go America!
I didn’t get a good group picture, but here’s a cute shot of Jill, Shona, and Kelly:
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