Since Wednesday, we have continued our progress on total demos. We completed sites KJ, railroad crossing, and around landfill, demoing over 350 plant locations. We also surveyed dozens of flowering echinacea, cataloging their flowering heads and precise locations.
While total demo continues on, today is also full of lasts—we have completed measuring in exPt08! While we experienced quite a rain delay (and a sky-cracking lightning strike somewhere on the property), the team braved the mist, 90% humidity, and the very wet grass to complete our final row of measuring in exPt08 this morning. Harvest lists are compiled and ready to go, meaning we can move on to monitoring the echinacea heads and harvesting them when their seeds are ready. After the achenes are harvested, they will be dried and brought back to the Chicago Botanic Garden, where we will determine the number of achenes produced and seed viability. This gives us insight on the fitness of the plants in the qGen2 and qGen3 cohorts.
We are also saying goodbye to Gael, one of our high school interns. We will remember Gael for his hard work, singing during tasks, and tripping into badger holes in the field. While we are very sad to see him go, Gael is starting his first year at University of Minnesota Morris, where he is studying chemistry.
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