This semester at school (University of Minnesota Twin Cities), I have been continuing the Dust Project I was working on over the summer. From the work this summer, I had collected 64 heads of Echinacea angustifolia that were then brought down to the Twin Cities for me to continue working on. Just recently, I finished cleaning them (many lovely mornings were spent on the St. Paul Campus, I was lucky enough to have a window in front of the counter I was working at). While it felt a little weird to see the flowers after hiking through a blizzard, it was exciting to see a little bit of the results from this summer’s hard work. There was one head that decided to split down the middle, I found that intriguing. It made me wonder whether something was living in it at one point, or if something else caused it to divide! Currently the heads are being mailed down to CBG to get x-rayed, then I will start the process of counting the full achenes to see if the dust made a difference in its reproductive success.
You can view past updates about Dust HERE.
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