The west unit of Staffanson burned this spring, so we expect a multitude of flowers this year. When Jared, Lindsey, and I visited Staffanson to stake random points on Wednesday, we noted which plants were flowering after the burn. Here’s what we found, from A to Z:
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 moreawesomemusic 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.
Today was my last day of work for this summer. It was also Hattie and Per’s last days. They go back to school next week! It’s crazy how much this summer has flown by! To inaugurate my last day we started with rechecking demography records. We then had our last lunch with the Wagenius’ as a whole. They are headed off towards Chicago where Gretel, Hattie, and Per will be staying for the fall (Gretel will be back and forth). The afternoon became warmer and the sky cleared up. The rest of the team got trained in on how to harvest Echinacea heads in P1. I stayed behind to finish up some work on my independent project. At the end of the day Abby and Will left without saying goodbye (I wish you both good luck in the new school year and hope that excellent times come your way). But out biggest trouble was figuring out what to do with Ricarda/Ricardo/Erica/Rica/Ric/Rick/Richard/Ricky. We debated whether to let him go on the grape vine outside the Hjelm house or to bring him back to town hall. We ultimately decided to let Ricarda/Ricardo/Erica/Rica/Ric/Rick/Richard/Ricky go on the grape vine outside of the Hjelm house.
We then headed home for our usual Friday night pizza making session! We made wonderful veggie, sausage and green pepper, and pineapple pizzas! We then went outside to watch the sunset through the smoke from the wildfires in Montana and Washington. The sun was a beautiful orb of orange as it set over the soybean fields to the west of K-town. Then someone put Kent in the shower.
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Nancy Braker and Marie Schaedel came to visit today! Nancy is the director of the Cowling Arboretum at Carleton College and Mary was a member of Team Echinacea 2013. They are also good friends of Jared’s and mine and prairie enthusiasts–so there was no disagreement about how we should spend our time.
We spent the day on a grand tour of three of the area’s largest and most diverse prairie remnants: Staffanson Prairie (right here in southwest Douglas County), Seven Sisters Prairie (near Ashby in Otter Tail County), and Strandness Prairie (Pope County). All are owned and managed by the Nature Conservancy. Every few steps we would find a new wildflower, grass, or insect to inspect, identify, and appreciate. It was a nice reminder of why we spend our days toiling in experimental plots and roadside ditches: to preserve the vibrant beauty of the healthy prairie.
Here are a few photos from our journey:
The sumac forest at Seven Sisters swallowed all but Jared’s binoculars.
In western Minnesota, a little elevation goes a long way (on top of Seven Sisters, 190 feet above Lake Christina).
Echinacea at Strandness Prairie. They look a little weird without flags and tags.
Prairie peeping makes for happy campers. (Strandness Prairie.)
We started out the day doing what we do best: searching for seedlings in Experimental Plot 8 (a.k.a. Q2). Having braved formidable winds to plant them late last October, Stuart, Gretel, and Ruth were visibly relieved to see them pop up this spring. Since last week Team Echinacea has been diligently tracking down each seedling and “naming” them with colored toothpicks and row location coordinates, accurate to one centimeter.
In the afternoon we located and counted Echinacea in the recruitment experiment, a continuation of the project described in this paper. The procedure is really fun: we find the boundaries of the plots with metal detectors, triangulate points, then search within an area exactly the size of a regulation 175-gram Disc-craft Ultra Star disc (a.k.a. frisbee). Go CUT!
The best part of the day was tagging my first Echinacea. Maybe it just lost its old tag, but I like to think this is the first time this plant has ever born the silver badge. Sometime 10-12 years ago, this seed was planted. Now that it is finally about to flower, it has the honor of going down in history in the databases of the Echinacea Project, living out the rest of its life in the service of science. This 23rd of June, 3.65 m from the southwest corner and 0.79 m from the southeast corner of the northeast plot in Recruit 9, I named a flowerstalk “19061.” Isn’t it beautiful?
Doesn’t the flower head look ripe? Stuart says we may start to see flowering as early as the end of this week!
Eventually the time came to leave my new friend and join the rest of the team. This is where they were:
This lovely bee is the 610th insect that we collected this summer for the Pollinators on Roadsides project. There's only one container of bees left to pin! This project is funded by @mnenrtf. https://t.co/VgJYZGbdo8
