In summer 2021, Team Echinacea searched for and mapped 708 flowering Prairie lily (Lilium philadelphicum) plants across 6 patches of remnant prairie in our study area in western Minnesota. Unlike many prairie species that flower vigorously after fire, these self-incompatible lilies flower two years after dormant season fires. We are investigating how fire influences lily flowering density and reproduction. We harvested seed pods from 80 individuals across 5 patches to quantify seed set.
Start year: 2021
Location: Remnant patches of prairie in and around Solem Township, MN
Overlaps with: NA
Data collected: demographic data: ~aiisummer2021/otherSpp/Lilium_philadelphicum/output/lilium2021Data.csv
Samples or specimens collected: Pods/seed collected during summer 2021 currently reside in Jared’s office. These seeds need to be inventoried, cleaned, counted, and scored for seed set.
Products: Stay tuned!
You can read more about the Lilium fire and flowering project, as well as links to prior flog entries about this experiment, on the background page for this experiment.
To examine the role flowering phenology plays in the reproduction of Echinacea angustifolia, Jennifer Ison planted this plot in 2006 with 3,961 individuals selected for extreme (early or late) flowering timing, or phenology. Using the phenological data collected this summer, we explore how flowering phenology influences reproductive fitness and estimate the heritability of flowering time in E. angustifolia.
In summer 2021, we visited 2,010 positions of the 3,961 positions originally planted. We measured 1,591 living plants, of which 681 were flowering, with a total of 1,283 flowering heads. In the fall, we harvested ~615 heads from exPt02. We do not have an exact number of heads harvested from exPt02 yet because we have not had time to complete head inventory. The large difference between the number of heads and the number harvested has to do with high levels of seed predation, mainly by ground squirrels.
Measuring p2 involved 9 different people working a total of 4295 minutes (71.58 hours) on 4 separate days.
Physical specimens: We harvested approximately 615 heads from exPt 2. Many heads were harvested by ground squirrels, so our number of heads does not match the number harvested. We brought the harvested heads back to the lab, where we will count fruits and assess seed set for each head.
Data collected: We collected data on each position planted. We recorded whether the plant was alive; if it was alive, whether it was flowering or basal. Basal plants had information about number of basal rosettes, number of basal leaves, and length of longest leaf. For flowering plants, we collected rosette counts and the height of each flowering head. When harvesting, we collected samples of loose achenes and recorded where they were from. Next spring, we will search for seedlings at these positions to ensure that there are not any rouge plants.
Products: Will and Jennifer are working on a manuscript using the flowering phenology data from this plot.
You can find more information about the heritability of flowering time and links to previous flog posts at the background page for the experiment.
In 2021, we collected data on the timing of flowering for 1692 flowering plants (2292 flowering heads) in 32 remnant populations. The plants ranged from having 1 to 18 flowering heads. The earliest bloomers initiated flowering on June 18, and the latest head initiated flowering on August 1. We identify each plant with a numbered tag affixed to the base and give each head a colored twist tie, so that each head has a unique tag/twist-tie combination, or “head ID”, under which we store all phenology data. We monitor the flowering status of all flowering plants in the remnants, visiting at least once every three days (usually every two days) until all heads are done flowering to obtain start and end dates of flowering.
Linking this detailed phenology data with information about seed production will help us understand how the timing of reproduction influences pollination and reproductive fitness. Additionally, we are excited to investigate whether fire synchronizes flowering in remnant populations. Eight of the populations in which we collected phenology data were burned during spring 2021.
Stylishly counting rows of styles while learning how to collect phenology data in remnants.
Start year: 1996
Location: Roadsides, railroad rights of way, and nature preserves in and around Solem Township, MN
Data/materials collected: We managed the data in the R project ‘aiisummer2021′ and will add the records to the database of previous years’ remnant phenology records, which is located here: https://echinaceaproject.org/datasets/remnant-phen/. The 2021 phenology data set needs to be cleaned and prepared for integration with phenology data from previous years and is still located in the aiisummer2021 repo.
Products: Stay tuned!
You can find more information about phenology in the remnants and links to previous flog posts regarding this experiment at the background page for the experiment.
Echinacea pallida flowering phenology:Echinacea pallida is a species of Echinacea that is not native to Minnesota. It was mistakenly introduced to our study area during a restoration of Hegg Lake WMA. Since 2011, Team Echinacea has visited the pallida restoration, taken flowering phenology, and collected demography on the non-native. We have decapitated all flowering E. pallida each year to avoid cross-pollination with the local Echinacea angustifolia. Each year, we record the number of heads on each plant and the number of rosettes. We also get precise gps coordinates of all plants and then chop the flowering heads off! This year, we cut E. pallida heads off on July 6th and 8th. We shot gps points as they were found; in the fall, we revisited the plants and did not find any stragglers.
Overall, we found and shot 143 flowering E. pallida plants, and 433 heads in total, averaging 3.02 heads per plant. The average rosette count was 5, the maximum was 27 rosettes — absolutely massive!! When recording data on E. pallida, we forgot that we needed phenology data, so the data from the 6th does not have any phen at all, and the data from the 8th is in the demo form in notes as a string. We do not have very accurate data on phenology of E. pallida this year, but our estimated first day flowering is June 22nd.
Pallida demo/cut/surv involved 7 different people working a total of 1170 minutes (19.5 hours) on 3 separate days.
Location: Hegg Lake WMA Start year: 2011
You can find more information about E. pallida flowering phenology and previous flog posts on the background page for the experiment.
exPt6: Experimental plot 6 was the first E. angustifolia x E. pallida hybrid plot planted by Team Echinacea. A total of 66 Echinacea hybrids were originally planted; all have E. angustifolia dams and E. pallida sires. In 2021, we visited 31 positions and found 15 living plants. No plants have flowered in this plot yet.
Location: near exPt8 Start year: Crossing in 2011, planting in 2012
You can find more information about experimental plot 6 and previous flog posts about it on the background page for the experiment.
exPt7: Planted in 2013, experimental plot #7 was the second E. pallida x E. angustifolia plot. It contains conspecific crosses of each species as well as reciprocal hybrids. There were 294 plants planted. This summer, we visited 176, and of these plants, only 136 plants were still alive. There were 13 flowering plants this year! This is the most flowering plants that this plot has produced. These 26 flowering plants produced 26 heads. We have not yet used the pedigree data to see what number of these plants are hybrids or not.
Location: Hegg Lake WMA Start year: Crossing in 2012, planting in 2013
You can find more information about experimental plot 7 and previous flog posts about it on the background page for the experiment.
exPt9: Experimental plot 9 is a hybrid plot, but, unlike the other two hybrid plots, we do not have a perfect pedigree of the plants. That is because the E. angustifolia and E. pallida maternal plants used to generate seedlings for exPt9 were open-pollinated. We need to do paternity analysis to find the true hybrid nature of these crosses (assuming there are any hybrids). There were originally 745 seedlings planted in exPt9. We found 261 living plants in 2021, 20 of which were flowering, with 42 heads! There were 138 plants that we searched for but could not find.
Location: Hegg Lake WMA Start year: 2014
You can find out more information about experimental plot 9 and flog posts mentioning the experiment on the background page for the experiment.
Measuring p6/7/9 involved 8 different people working a total of 1380 minutes (23 hours) on 2 separate days.
Experimental plots 6, 7, and 9 all burned this year. The peak in number of flowering plants in both p7 and p9 this year is indicative of the effect fire can have on flowering in Echinacea. In the past we have bagged heads in these plots but this year we did not.
Data collected for exp679: For all three plots, we collected rosette number, length of all leaves, and herbivory for each plant. We used visors to collect data electronically, and it is still being processed to be put into our SQL database.
Data collected for E. pallida demography and phenology: Demography data, head counts, rosette counts, gps points shot for each E. pallida. Find demo and phenology visor records in the aiisummer2021 repository. GPS coordinates can be found in demap. As mentioned above, all phenology data from July 8th can be found in demo. For more details, see aiiSummer2021/demo/pallidaPhen.R.
The crew poses after knocking out measuring half of p7 and p9
To experimentally test hypotheses about how much Pedicularis canadensis, a native hemiparasite, affects the demographic rates (survival, growth, and reproduction) of other species, we planted plugs of P. canadensis in the center of a circle (with a radius of 20 cm) that contains 8 species. These eight common native prairie plant species are Echinacea angustifolia, Liatris ligulistylis, Solidago speciosa, Dalea purpurea, Pediomelum argophyllum, Sporobolus heterolepis, Koeleria macrantha, and Hesperostipa spartea. For all but Echinacea, seed was collected last year from local sources. Echinacea is the focal species of other experiments and had been planted previously. Echinacea plants served as a reference point when establishing our circles and were always directly west of P.canadensis. Circles are planted in 6 rows that were randomly selected from within the existing experimental plot 10. Rows 315, 436, 443, 643, 656, and 785 were selected. Rows contain 11 circles each, starting at 1m and going to 11m, evenly distributed 1m apart.
All circles were planted on July 29th, 2021.Plants were planted as plugs. Plugs were grown by Chicago Botanic Garden production staff before being transported to Minnesota and transplanted. Pedicularis served as the treatment and had 3 factor levels (0, 1, or 2 Pedicularis plants). Treatments were randomly assigned to circles and Pedicularis were planted in the center of each circle between August 9th and 13th, 2021. Plants in the circles were measured between August 16th and 20th, 2021.Traits measured were size and reproductive status.
Over the last two years I designed and planted an experiment in an already established prairie restoration (exPt01) to test hypotheses about the effects of parasite inclusion in restorations. This experimental planting of hemiparasites has three factors (Comandra umbellata, Pedicularis canadensis, and soil plugs), each with two levels (presence or absence), but three factor-level combinations are impossible because the presence of parasites is confounded with presence of soil. This translates to me having 216 row x position combinations in which I randomly assigned Comandra umbellata, Pedicularis canadensis, and soil plugs. However, roots trap soil and therefore soil is always carried in with parasites, the two treatments are confounded and so we used soil transplants to account for this.
In June, I went out and assessed the realized design of my experimental planting of hemiparasites. I assessed presence or absence of Comandra umbellata and Pedicularis canadensis at each of my 216 row x position combinations. I found only one Comandra but I found 30/72 or 42% of all Pedicularis.
In late August through early September, I planted 1 plug of Liatris ligulistylis and one plug of Solidago speciosa at each of my 216 locations. These plants were then measured. I added these plugs to serve as response variables to my three-factored experiment.
Last year, at all 216 locations I distributed seeds from 32 native plant species. In September, I went out and assessed seedlings present. I recorded the number and photographed the seedling to identify later in the laboratory.
In late October I intend to harvest 216 strips (0.1m x 1.0m) of dried biomass (1/6th of the dried biomass) from my 216 locations as I have also done in the last 2 years.
Start year: 2019
Location: Douglas County, Minnesota; exPt 1
Overlaps with: Experimental plot management, Hesperostipa common garden experiment
Materials collected: 216 .1 x 1m strips of dried biomass are stored at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Whew, the past month has been a blur. When I hopped in a car on April 21, we had not gotten a start on our ambitious burn plans. We hadn’t even stepped foot in Minnesota since the fall. Fast forward three weeks and we had completed 10 prescribed burns including 2 experimental plots and 8 remnants (listed below). These included nine burns in a rather intense period of nine days (May 4 to May 12)!
Experimental plots: p8 & p10
Remnants: eri (north), yoh (east), yoh (west), kjs, lc (east), sap, lf (east), & dog
Huge thanks to all the volunteers who came out to help with prescribed burns this spring! We could not have completed such as safe and successful 2021 burn season without you. And thank you to all the landowners who gave us permission to conduct prescribed burns. We are grateful to have such wonderful, supportive neighbors and we look forward to continuing to work with you!
Prescribed burns are an important part of our research. Fire is the most effective and efficient way to maintain our experimental plots. Without periodic fire, they would be quickly overrun by shrubs and trees. We are also eager to investigate how fire affects prairie plant reproduction and population growth. Burning is a necessary first step for these projects! But a fringe benefit that excites me is returning fire to the landscape starved for fire. Contrary to popular belief, I am not a pyromaniac. I am mesmerized by the sight of flames dancing across the ground, the distinctive pops and crackles given off my warm season grasses engulfed in flames, the warmth emanating from the fiery spectacle, and the lingering smell of smoke but this isn’t why I burn. I burn because fire is as much a part of prairie as rain, sunlight, soil, and wind.
Before the early 1900s, fire was ubiquitous. Lightning strikes generate an immense amount of energy and heat which undoubted ignited fires in dry prairie grasses that raced across the contiguous expanse of North American prairie. Moreover, for millennia Native Americans adeptly used fire to manage the landscape. Fire was used to reduce fuel loads and the risk of catastrophic wildfire, improve forage to game animals, clear land for crops, and undoubtedly many other reasons. Estimates of fire frequency in tallgrass prairie pre-1850 suggest any given location burned every 1-5 years. Even after Euro-American settlement, fire was common. Landowners often burned ditches to prevent woody plants from establishing and burned pasture to improve forage for livestock. Bottom line: in the post-glacial history of western Minnesota, the widespread absence of fire for the past 70+ years is abnormal.
Prairies need fire. Without fire, we risk losing the incredible diversity of prairie plants sheltering in remnants scattered across the landscape. We risk losing the diverse pollinators and insect herbivores that depend on those prairie plants. as well as their predators (other insects and arthropods, birds, reptiles, small mammals, etc.) and so on. We risk losing Minnesota’s rich prairie heritage. The challenge is safely returning fire to the landscape, understanding the differences and tradeoffs of burning small prairie remnants rather than large expanses of prairie, and making recommendations about burning based on sound science. Sounds like a job for Team Echinacea 2021!
Echinacea pallida Flowering phenology:Echinacea pallida is a species of Echinacea that is not native to Minnesota. It was mistakenly introduced to our study area during a restoration of Hegg Lake WMA. Since 2011, Team Echinacea has visited the pallida restoration and taken flowering phenology and collected demography on the non-native. We have decapitated all flowering Echinacea pallida each year to avoid pollination with the local Echinacea angustifolia. Each year we record the number of heads on each plant and the number of rosettes. We also get precise gps coordinates of all plants and then chop the flowering heads off! This year we cut E. pallida heads off on June 30th. We revisited plants and shot gps pointson September 17th 2020. When shooting points, we found two E. pallida plants that had missed the big decapitation event. We harvested the heads before any fruit dispersed.
Overall, we found and shot 99 flowering E. pallida. On average, each plant produced 1.96 flowering heads, with a total of 194 beheadings. The average rosette count was 6.1, the maximum was 31 rosettes — absolutely massive!!
Location: Hegg Lake WMA Start year: 2011
exPt6: Experimental plot 6 was the first E. angustifolia x E. pallida hybrid plot planted by Team Echinacea. A total of 66 Echinacea hybrids were originally planted; all have E. angustifolia dams and E. pallida sires. In 2020, we visited 40 positions and found 22 living plants. No plants have flowered in this plot yet. Location: near exPt8 Year started: Crossing in 2011, planting in 2012
You can find more information about experimental plot 6 and previous flog posts about it on the background page for the experiment.
exPt7: Planted in 2013, experimental plot # 7 was the second E. pallida x E. angustifolia plot. It contains conspecific crosses of each species as well as reciprocal hybrids. There were 294 plants planted, of these plants only 148 plants were still alive. There were 2 flowering plants this year! One was the progeny of a E. pallida x E pallida cross and the other of these flowering plants was a hybrid of E. pallida X E. angustifolia! This is the first hybrid to bloom. Anna M. investigated the compatibility of this hybrid with E. pallida and E. angustifolia by performing a series of hand crosses.
Location: Hegg Lake WMA Start year: Crossing in 2012, planting in 2013
exPt9: Experimental plot 9 is a hybrid plot, but, unlike the other two hybrid plots, we do not have a perfect pedigree of the plants. That is because E. angustifolia and E. pallida maternal plants used to generate seedlings for exPt9 were open-pollinated. We need to do paternity analysis to find the true hybrid nature of these crosses (assuming there are any hybrids). There were originally 745 seedlings planted in exPt9. We found 391 living plants in 2020, three of which were flowering! Two of these plants were technically “flowering” because they produced buds, but they produced zero flowering heads because no flowers ever opened (no pollen or fruits). There were 105 plants that we searched for but could not find. Location: Hegg Lake WMA Start year: 2014
You can find out more information about experimental plot 9 and flog posts mentioning the experiment on the background page for the experiment.
There were a total of three flowering heads between the three plots, we collected flowering phenology data on these heads. Flowering started on June 28th and ended between July 7th and 23rd. There were two additional flowering plants that only produced duds.
Data collected for exp679: For all three plots we collected rosette number, length of all leaves, and herbivory for each plant. We used visors to collect data electronically and it is still being processed to be put into our SQL database.
Data collected for E. pallida demography and phenology: Demography data, head counts, rosette counts, gps points shot for each E. pallida. Find demo and phenology visor records in the aiisummer2020 repository. GPS coordinates can be found in demap.
Look at this three-headed E. pallida monster we found! Shown at the beginning and end of season
We are still monitoring the fate of the patch of Hill’s thistle at Hegg Lake WMA. It is a unique patch in our study area, as far as we know. In summer 2020, we did not have time to visit the rosettes that we mapped out in previous years. Twice Stuart went to search for flowering rosettes. He found one! Here’s a photo of the flowering rosette from Sept 17th. Note it is all dried up. Stuart thinks that the head produced zero viable fruits because it looked like the head was intact and it crumbled when he handled it. But it is possible that that was a fruit that had already dispersed and the rest of the head remained intact.
The single flowering rosette of Cirsium hillii from 2020.
Start year: 2014
Location: Hegg Lake WMA
Data collected: none.
Products:
You can find more information about our experiment on how fire affects the fitness of Cirsium hillii and links to previous flog posts regarding this experiment at the background page for the experiment.
Echinacea pallida is a non-native species to the prairie of western Minnesota and E. pallida has the potential to out compete the native E. angustifolia. To learn more about this in 2020, we cross-pollinated E. angustifolia, E. pallida, and a E. angustifolia X E. pallida hybrid plant to assess interspecies compatibility. This experiment investigates the reproductive potential of E. angustifolia and E. pallida hybrids, of which may threaten native E. angustifolia preservation.
Since this was the first year that a hybrid plant flowered it was a great opportunity to investigate this question. On July 6th, 2020, seventy-six total hand crosses were completed to test mating compatibility. Three E. angustifolia and three E. pallida plants from Hegg Lake WMA were selected to serve as maternal plants in the experiment. Each treatment consisted of three crosses with pollen from the plant’s respective species, three crosses with the hybrid pollen, and three crosses with no pollen as a control. E. angustifolia and E. pallida pollen was collected from no less than three plants to reduce risk of self-pollination. Finally, pollen collected from each maternal plant was administered to the hybrid. The hybrid received nine crosses with three different E. angustifolia plants, nine crosses with three different E. Pallida plants, and three styles received no pollen as a control. The order of pollen administration was randomized across a designated row of styles.
Pollinator exclusion bags were used to limit exposure to pollinators. We later collected the heads from the hybrid, maternal E. angustifolia, and maternal E. pallida plants. In the winter, these heads will be x-rayed to assess seed set.
