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Team Echinacea worked a half day this morning, with most of us working on our individual projects. Then we headed back to Andes to gear up for an afternoon celebrating July 4th. We got our bathing suits on, finished up our potluck items, and headed over to Elk Lake.
It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon, and we had a lot of tasty food. At least half of the picnic table was covered in desserts. Following tradition, the Declaration of Independence had to be read, with each of us taking turns. There was a small debate about whether this should happen before or after eating, but that decision-making was pretty easy.
Eventually the heat got to us and we took the canoes out. Some splashing battles between the Wes-Ashley canoe and the Alex-Anna-Tracie canoe ensued. A few close calls, but no one fell in. After that, we spent the rest of our time swimming, hanging out, and watching Blue eat watermelon rinds.
The Andes crew is planning to climb up the nearby hill to watch some fireworks from the surrounding towns tonight. Should be an exciting ending to our day.
 Everyone gathering around for a July 4th lunch at Elk Lake. Lemon squares, fruit pizza, brownies, peach-plum pie, and oreo-peanut butter pie. Lea, Will, Stuart, Per, Gretel, and Alex enjoying some food.
Today we started off by dividing and conquering phenology in all of the remnants and in p1 and p2. Gretel and Stuart did phenology in p1 while Ashley and I took the Northwest loop, Will started solo then met up with Wes and Anna at p2. Meanwhile, Tracie and Alex discovered that Staffanson has lots of ticks this year. Stuart and Gretel took Hattie to camp, so the rest of the team had an extra short lunch then started measuring in p8. I finished GPSing points for the yellow pan traps as well. Overall we had a smooth day, with a few raindrops at the very end.
 A small head being pollinated by one of our native solitary bees!
 Cows were not particularly happy about phenology Monday…
Like Wes said yesterday, it’s pretty clear the crew living at the Andes ski condo enjoys quiet and relaxing mornings. After I made myself waffles and enjoyed a tall cup of hazelnut coffee, Lea and I ventured out to Alexandria to run errands. We stopped by the trusty laundromat to wash our clothes, some of which had wild parsnip oil on it. While our clothes were in the wash, we went grocery shopping for the week. I’m making pasta salad on Wednesday, and I had fun searching the store for all the ingredients I needed. When we checked-out of the store, we returned to our trusty laundromat and switched our clothes to the dryer. To utilize our time, we stepped next door to the coffee shop. There, Lea thought through some of her research questions, and I worked on my experimental design for my summer REU project.
 Lea working in the coffee shop When we collected our laundry, we came back to Andes, and we all enjoyed the braut dinner Wes made. After dinner, we all drank tall glasses of chocolate milk. Yum. 🙂
It’s fair to say that the portion of the team staying at Andes Hill Ski condo enjoys slow mornings and quiet time. Tracie, Lea, Alex, and I all went into Alexandria to get groceries, work on project organization, and do laundry. Ashley enjoyed a peaceful day at the condo finishing up a paper for a study abroad trip she took earlier in the summer.
I took part of my afternoon and went for a hike at Carlos Lake State Park just north of Alexandria. The park is located on Carlos Lake and has both old-growth hardwood forest and restored prairie.
Lake Carlos State Park In the evening, I drove to Starbuck to play with the Morris Community Band in a parade.
 Starbuck, MN 4th of July Parade Then Ashley, Lea, Alex, Tracie, and I met up in Alexandria to try out Copper Trail Brewery.
Copper Trail Brewery Happy 4th of July weekend!
Wes
Hi flog,
I’m still here! In Chicago, that is. Hilary, the volunteers, and I have been quietly and methodically catching up on lab work for the last month. An update on our progress:
- Earlier this week, Art completed counting the last achenes from 2014! Now we have estimates of seed set for every plant harvested in 2014. He and Aldo will now count achenes from one of the inbreeding experiments, before moving on to P2, which Lois has been working on since March.
- Anne has finished scanning qGen_a in 2015. These have been uploaded and are ready to be counted.
- Thanks to Char, Susie, Suzanne, Shelley and Laura, we are almost done randomizing qGen_a in 2015. These guys finished randomizing the massive P2 experiment last month. I think they are randomizing so quickly I am going to have to ask some of them to switch to cleaning soon.
- Speaking of cleaning, there are only 31 heads left from 2015 to clean. Wow! That is less than 1% of that year’s massive harvest of over 3200 heads. Soon, they will start the much smaller and more manageable harvest of 2016, which had only 1060 heads. Naomi, Allen and Susie have done a lot of the cleaning recently.
- Leslie and Kathryn have been rechecking very efficiently and providing good, clean achene packets for scanning. They are currently rechecking qGen_b from 2015.
- Art and Anne have picked up in assembling sheets for x-raying in the Fall. All of 2013 and 2014’s sheets have been assembled, so they are assembling sheets from P2 in 2015. Today Anne assembled over 10 sheets! In her words it was, “kinda meditative”.
Echinacea is only starting to flower in Minnesota, but it has been flowering here at the Botanic Garden for a few weeks now. I’ve taken some pictures of some of the pollinators I’ve seen!
 Just a reminder that it’s not just bees that feed on pollen! Here is a fly I saw sitting directly on an anther . Interestingly, I didn’t see it move around the head — I wonder how much pollen it was actually transferring.
This bumblebee was going to down on this Echinacea pallida outside the Rice building! This surprised me because Stuart said he has only once ever seen any type of bumblebee pollinating angustifolia. In other exciting news, today we had a power outage at CBG due to construction! This meant that I worked for part of the day in the dark. Anne and Shelley came in later to keep me company and we moved to a room with big windows to enjoy the ambient light. We were so inspired by this day without electricity that Shelley took me to Stuart and Gretel’s house, where I harvested some of the lettuce from their garden. I was happy for the lettuce, but sad because today was my last day of working with both Shelley and Anne. Hopefully I will see them again some day.
Me living off of that rich Highland Park soil! Thanks Stuart and Gretel!
Today was the first day that we went out to do phenology at all the remnants, p1, and p2. The weather was really nice, the first day all week that we have seen the sun for more than a brief moment. We saw lots of flowering Echinacea, and since the weather was so warm (and had been so cold) we saw lots of pollinators! I saw one plant with two bees on it at once while Ashley and I visited our Aanenson remnant.
 Two tiny pollinators! We finished phenology before lunch and after lunch Tracie and I went to Staffanson to GPS the new flowering plants that Gretel and Anna found this morning, we also found a couple new flowering plants. Alex went out solo with the GPS to survey the points for the yellow pan traps and Lea’s vegetation surveys. The rest of the team worked in p1 verifying positions of flowering Echinacea and the positions of plants that will be used in the Aphid exclusion and addition experiment that has been going on for several years.
Happy Friday!
Will
We started the morning by going into P1 to look and record and flowering or basal Stipa. This task involved locating the Stipa, counting the stems, healthy, aborted, along with missing fruits, and then collecting the healthy fruits for planting. Information collected will be used to estimate the fitness of stipa. Working together we finished the entire plot and recorded 147 stipa plants. The largest plant had 31 stems and 301 fruits!
 (Left to right) The stipa seeds seperated for counting, a large stipa plant, Will and Wes working in P1 After lunch some of us worked on individual projects and a couple went into P8 to plant they freshly harvested stipa seeds. This was done by broadcasting (aka distributing) them evenly throughout the entire plot. Later in the afternoon Will, Ashley, and myself, went back into P1 to locate the plants part of the aphid project. Â These randomly selected Echinacea will be monitored for aphid activity throughout the summer. Will claims to have found one, in his own words, that had over a billion aphids! Which is honestly not the best for any plant…
(left to right) Broadcasting the stipa in p8, the pile of harvested stipa seeds, a stipa plant that had 163 seeds
Looking forward to more phenology and flowering Echinacea!
Today we had a slightly late start because we were concerned about weather. But, the rain held out and we managed to have a productive day! Ashley, Anna, Alex and I started the day with phenology and searching for Echinacea at Aanansen. This remnant is particularly interesting this year because many trees were removed from the top of the hill, making the landscape look totally different! After lunch, I went around solo for a bit and worked on vegetation analysis at some of my roadside sites. I’ll explain the project in more detail in a future flog post, so stay tuned! Finally, we ended the day by identifying all of the flowering Echinacea up at p2.
After work, the Andes crew headed in to Alexandria to do some errands and try Culver’s (many of us for the first time!)
Sunset at Andes!
I’d like to introduce everyone following the Flog to Blue, Gretel and Stuart’s wonderful puppy of less than five months.
In the morning we split up into two groups. One went to Staffanson to conduct transect phenology and the other group went to plot 2 at Hegg Lake to conduct phenology.
At Hegg Lake there were hundreds and hundreds of Echinacea heads, including one of the first blooming plants of the summer!
While double checking twist ties on heads (used to differentiate heads on one plant), Gretel and I found a bumble bee sleeping in a morning glory. How cute!
On our way back to Hjelm House for lunch, we stopped at a hillside to see Wood Lily (Lilium philadelphicum)Â blooming in a remnant at Hegg Lake.
We also saw blooming Locoweed!
After lunch, we went out and searched for small, nonflowering Echinacea in plot 8. Tracie was definitely enjoying herself, but Alex was a little harder to read…
On our way home, large storm clouds were moving in on use with lightening and threatening thunder.
Hoping for clear weather tomorrow!
Wes
The name of today was phenology! Wes, Ashley, Anna, and I started off the morning finding and documenting Echinacea buds at the East Elk Lake Road fragment. We had heard tell of a four headed plant living on the edge of the corn field, and low and behold there it was! We only found about 20 plants, but I’m sure we will find more as the season progresses.
In the afternoon, we split into 2 groups: one group went to conduct phenology at p2, and the other group went to stake and find plants at the Staffanson transect plot. Staffanson was absolutely beautiful; there were a few puffy white clouds, the temperature was perfect, and the Echinacea buds were out! The p2 team reported that there would be an above average number of flowering Echinacea plants this year, while we found typical numbers of Echinacea buds at Staffanson. It was a great day of fieldwork and a nice way to start the week.
Stuart and Tracie at Staffanson Prairie doing phenology and staking the transect (26 June 2017).
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