Description: In the late summer of 2013, members of Team Echinacea collected heads from Echinacea angustifolia and Echinacea pallida plants growing in two nearby populations at Hegg Lake Wildlife Management Area. The E. angustifolia plants are native to this site while E. pallida is not native to Minnesota. All plants were open pollinated–we performed no artificial crosses in 2013. Investigating the seedlings will allow us to determine if hybridization is occurring naturally. In the winter of 2014, Lydia English germinated seeds from these heads. In the spring, Lydia and Stuart planted 745 seedlings at Hegg Lake WMA near experimental plot 7. Since then, team members take fitness measurements such as number of rosettes and leaf lengths every year.
Echinacea Pallida at Hegg Lake
Start year: Heads collected in 2013, planting in 2014
Location: Hegg Lake Wildlife Management Area – Experimental plot 9 (aka Lydia’s plot)
Products: Check the flog for preliminary analyses and annual reports.
Read updates about this experiment on our flog (field blog) as written by members of Team Echinacea.
