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This summer, a very large portion of our lives has been devoted to that Purple Coneflower, Echinacea. This plant has infused itself into our conversations, dreams, birthday cards (my little sister has one coming with a bee and a purple flower,) and yes, baking.
Can you guess what these are?
Seedling cupcakes with vegan chocolate earth, marzipan greens, and sprinkles for the pubescence. Megan’s idea.
What about this?
Why, that is an Echinacea leaf chocolate chip cookie, of course.
Even if we cannot eat the Echinacea, at least it inspires us to bake delicious desserts :).
Here is a picture of the “inside-out cucumber” that Per brought into the Hjelm house today. But is it merely a strange vegetable or an apparition of the Virgin Mary? The vegetable says you must make a pilgrimage so that it can give you blessings.
Robberflies can catch bees in midair. I’ve never seen it myself but I know that’s not all they can do….
OMG!
The spider could not be reached for comment.
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.
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:
^_^
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.
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.
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.
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