Today we got the microscope camera in the mail– here are the results!
This is the long-awaited photo of Echinacea angustifolia pollen. THIS IS IT, GUYS. Are you crying yet?
Love,
Daniel and Amanda
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Cirsium altissimum A certain someone has thrown the digital gauntlet down, and being who I am, I cannot stand by and let that someone’s remarks pass. Generations of Raths back to the Dark Ages would roll over in their graves were their descendant to back down, spineless, before a challenge. I shall outmaneuver my opponent by focusing on quality, not quantity. My posts shall be masterpieces of prose and picture, and my adversary shall soon bow down, defeated. Today was a rather productive day, as Amy and I flagged transects in Nessman, Stephen’s Approach, KJ’s, Northwest of Landfill, and East Riley. They all went fairly quickly one we got the procedure down: Determine where the plants correspond to the map, lay down the first metre tape, choose and flag random spots on the length of the tape, measure outwards from that tape to the edge of the remnant, and flag that point as well. After that, we put in shiners and tags so that we could be sure of finding them again. We also flagged plants for Jennifer’s and Diedre’s tissue samples. Pictures below are of:
Note: As I was writing this, Dr. Ridley walked in carrying two Pappa John’s pizzas as a break from the healthy salads we have been eating all week! A move worthy of a saint! Potentilla arguta and other species for my project. If everyone could keep a lookout for these species, I would be grateful. Potentilla arguta More spp and images to be added later. I was recently informed that Daniel Rath has been “outblogging” me on the FLog, and I agree, he has– but it stops now. Daniel updates the FLog several times a week, and that’s cool. So from now on, every post Daniel posts, I too will post a post. Plus one. Consider this a challenge, Daniel Rath! To make up for lost time, and because if you’re anything like my mom (and you might be my mom– hi mom!) you love photos, here is a visual record of the past two days. 1) The past two mornings have been surprisingly cold here in K-town! Around 11:00 AM the truck bed has absorbed enough heat for a really fine cuddle. 2) On the way back from the ’99 South garden, Gretal (Queen Bee) and I saw a little hummingbird trying to run with the big dogs (some swallows) atop the telephone line. 3) In the end, he was a bit of an outcast. 4) Today many of us went to the landfill to practice our independent project techniques (characterizing floral neighborhoods, catching pollinators, collecting pollen from non-Echinacea flowers, etc). I expected a dump, but I found a wonderland– just see for yourselves! Don’t be fooled, it’s not Italy- it’s a DUMP. In Kensington!! Mimi couldn’t imagine what good deed could have landed her in such a place! Then we found this Prairie Lily (Lilium Philidelphicum) We got pulled over by this cop, and she made us characterize a floral neighborhood! There was also some flowering Leadplant (Amorpha canescens) I will post again soon about how my independent project plans are shaping up, so stay tuned. Don’t forget to leave feedback in the comments!! Edit: Click on the photos if you’d like a slightly larger image. In an attempt to outflog the rest of the team, I will describe what we did today. In the morning, most of us collected data for the phenology exp. No new plants had flowered, but some mistakes were caught in the flagging of positions from yesterday. I saw one of the large Halictid bees going to town on one of the flowering heads.Then until about 1, most of us headed out to the landfill site with different tasks in mind. I needed to do a test run of the FNC (I get tired of writing out floral neighborhood characterization) to see what obstacles we are going to face and about how long each one will take. Amanda helped me ID plants and test out the general protocol and it took about five minutes but there only 4 co-flowering species–Amorpha canascens, toothed evening primrose, Phlox pilosa, and Northern Bedstraw. Some species are more difficult to quantify in terms of number, such as Galium. After some discussion with Stuart, I think we will probably count each inflorescence as 1 “unit” so that counting the number of co-flowering species will be systematic and consistent. And now for more pretty pictures: The picture below shows the head that is leading the pack to flowering (row 46.67 pos 953.67). Its ray florets are spreading. As of June 22 about 50 heads had ray florets that were “up” (the ray florets were longer than the bracts of the receptacle).
These are pictures that I took in the common garden today. One of our long-term experiments evaluates the effects of burn treatments on seedling recruitment and survival (see abstract here:http://echinacea.umn.edu/bib/echinacea_abstracts.htm#wagenius_et_shaw_RE). Here are some photos documenting how we prepare plots for burning…
Our excellent photographer, Christine, took some awesome photos of plants at the landfill. I’ll update the scientific names when I get them identified.
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