|
|
For many of our experiments we want to harvest Echinacea heads when they are as ripe as possible, but before any achenes have dropped.
The standard harvest indicators are as follows:
- Phyllaries (involucral bracts) are brown
- Bracts that subtend each disc floret are brown and sharp
- Flower stalk (peduncle) is brown (not purple)
- 1st (uppermost) cauline lf is brown (note: 1st lf may be close to hd!)
Once harvest indicators 1 – 4 are positive, or if a head has loose achenes or is in some way deformed and you think achenes may be lost before the next harvest, harvest the hd! Make sure to look for loose achenes at the top of every hd with brown bracts.
Harvest a head by cutting it off and placing it carefully into a labeled bag. When cutting the hd off, hold the head firmly in one hand and cut the peduncle with the pruners 3-5 cm under the hd. You don’t need to open the bag all the way and the hd doesn’t need to go all the way to the bottom of the bag.
That’s our standard harvest protocol! Everything’s flowering so late this year, we won’t be harvesting for a while, but I wanted to post this while I was thinking about it.
Last summer I conducted a biweekly survey of aphids and ants in the common garden, an experimental prairie restoration containing Echinacea from various remnant populations. I was interested in the spatial distribution of aphids and ants within and across years. This year I plan to scale down my survey to once a month, beginning next Friday. Here’s a detailed protocol:
Common Garden Aphid Survey Protocol 2012.doc
Yesterday, the Mettler Toledo BALNT software was throwing up an error when it was started, preventing weighing.
Exact error message: BALNT.exe has generated errors and will be closed by Windows. You will need to restart the program. An error log is being created.
This seems to be an error with the config file in the C:Windows or C:WINNT directory. To fix this, take the zip file in I:DepartmentsResearchEchinaceaVolunteersBalancebalancebackup-good2012.zip and extract it to the C: drive. This should overwrite the Balance-May2012 directory on the C: drive. Take the BALNT.ini file from that directory and copy it to C:Windows or C:WINNT, whichever exists. You should be able to start the balance software and begin collecting points.
It’s been a busy week for everybody. Plants are blooming, pollen is shedding, and everyone is dashing about madly to catch the field season before it passes us by. I have been running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get ready for my aphid addition/exclusion experiment. Everyone has been a wonderful help setting up cages in this sweltering heat. My goal for this week is to finish my first round of experimental treatments: exclusion on Thursday and addition on Friday. Before then, I need to finish setting up nets and teach everyone how to wrangle aphids. Here is a protocol I wrote up to assist the teaching process and the data sheets I mention in the protocol. These are works in progress, so any feedback is appreciated.
AphidExclusionCollectionProtocol2011.doc
aphidexclusion.xls
aphidcollectionoutsideExpt.xls
aphidinfestation.xls
Happy wrangling,
Katherine
View image
I wrote this up last week, but neglected to post it on the flog. Here is a detailed protocol for the 2011 recruitment searches. See Wagenius et al. 2011* for a description of the seedling recruitment study.
RecruitmentProtocol2011.doc
*Wagenius, S., A.B. Dykstra, C.E. Ridley, and R.G. Shaw. 2011. Seedling recruitment in the long-lived perennial, Echinacea angustifolia: A 10-year experiment. Restoration Ecology.
Today we surveyed a patch of the common garden for aphid infestation. I chose my survey area based on observations I made Wednesday morning, during my initial search for aphids. I wanted my square to include at least one heavily-infested plant with ant domatia (dirt structures that ants build to cultivate aphids). Otherwise my choice of positions and rows was random.
Here is a description of today’s survey. This weekend I will go over the data and make a map of aphid infestation. Because it’s still early in the season for aphids, I hope to repeat this survey one or more times this summer to look for spatial and temporal patterns of infestation. Thank you to the Echinacea team members for your diligent data gathering.
Aphid survey protocol 1June2001.doc
I’m happy to say the survey went smoothly. Everyone seemed to have an easy time recognizing aphid life stages and ant domatia. My only goof-up was accidentally assigning the same row to two people, leaving us one row short, but thankfully we caught it in time to finish up before a thunderstorm hit. Next time I will be more careful about my row assignments.
I would like to repeat this survey several times throughout the summer–maybe once every two weeks. Here are some thoughts I have based on my observations in the common garden:
1. We have observed that plants with heavy infestations early in the season tend to have wrinkly, stunted leaves–possibly due to aphid overwintering. I suspect that these plants may serve as aphid source populations that spread to surrounding host plants. It will be interesting to see whether aphid infestation is more prevalent among plants nearby heavy aphid infestations (i.e. plants with all three aphid life stages, wrinkly leaves, and ant domatia).
2. I noticed that on plants with small infestations, ants seemed to be carrying away gravid females. Perhaps ants play a role in mitigating population-wide aphid infestation by concentrating aphids on a few heavily-infested plants. This survey won’t tell me much about the role of ants, but I am curious to see whether some plants lose their aphids throughout the season.
Thanks again everyone for helping me gather my first data set!
Today we started the seedling search at Steven’s Approach (SAP). The wind was strong and air temperature was chilly. We searched 3 circles; in one of the circles we found 6 seedlings! We drew a map and filled in a matrix, as we have done in previous years. We also tried out the new coordinate frame.
I (Amy) have revised the protocol. Please read it and feel free to suggest ways it can be improved.
Seedling Search Protocol 2011.doc
Here’s the protocol for creating demoMerge.csv
Protocol for creating DemoMerge.doc
Here’s the protocol for re-finds in the remnants. Please look it over, and critique!
Protocol for seedling refinds 2010.docx
|
|
