The Echinacea Project

carbon in the prairie

There are many reasons we don’t want to lose prairie remnants to woody encroachment or conversion to agriculture. One of them is because we don’t want the Carbon in the soil to go to the atmosphere. Here’s a nice visual derived from IPCC data, 2022.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/visualizing-carbon-storage-in-earths-ecosystems/

Compare temperate grasslands to temperate forests and croplands. How does a buckthorn thicket compare to any of these?

Something told the wild geese…

It’s autumn at Chicago Botanic Garden! Geese fly south overhead, the trees are ablaze, goldenrod has gone to seed, and there was even a dusting of snow on the ground this morning (which made for a treacherous bike ride along the Green Bay Trail).

But there are also many other signs within the Population Biology lab that will tell you fall is in the air. All of our heads from 2023 are done drying and we have just begun to inventory our harvest.

Here is Wyatt, pulling out the very first bag for 2023 inventory.

How else do we know it’s fall? We are gathering seeds and datasheets in preparation for a final return to Minnesota. We put these seeds out in experimental plots/transects or remnants “as late as possible, but not to late”. Ian is entering the last of the data from pollen and nectar collection this summer and it feels like forever ago. And when 4pm hits, the sun shines though the atrium and fills our lab with natural light. This doesn’t happen very often, but it’s a treat when it does.

Maybe it is all these tell-tale signs from the Echinacea Project that told the wild geese- “It was time to go”.

pollen and nectar = food for thought

Many plants, including Echinacea angustifolia, flower vigorously during the summer after a prescribed burn. We’ve demonstrated that the benefits of fire for seed production, in many circumstances, are bigger than just the increase in flowering. The additional boost to seed production results from better pollination after fires compared to other times. Now we are trying to figure out what’s going on with pollination–why is it better after a fire? It might be related to pollen or nectar, which are foods for the bees that pollinate Echinacea. Here are two possibilities: 1) after a fire, plants produce more or better pollen or nectar which draws in bees from farther away, so the plants get more visits and better pollination, presumably the bees are happier with abundant & healthy food. 2) after a fire, plants produce less or lower quality pollen or nectar which means bees need to fly to more plants to get a decent meal, so the plants get more visits, and the bees are probably frustrated with skimpier meals and bad food. The third possibility is that plants produce the same quality and quantity of pollen & nectar regardless of fires.

Over the summer we systematically collected pollen and nectar from many Echinacea plants in many populations (19) over many days. Our goal is to evaluate how fires affects the quality and quantity of pollen & nectar produced by Echinacea plants. We are getting close to wrapping up data-entry for our field collection of pollen and nectar from Echinacea angustifolia. Here’s a summary of data-entry progress so far…

$siteCt
[1] "11 sites of data entered twice & verified"

$pageCt
[1] "138 pages of data entered twice & verified"

$qsBySite
     site tagCt pageCt 
1      aa     6     11 
2  cg-p01     5     14 
3    eelr     5     13 
4   hulze     6     17 
5   hulzw     5     13 
6  hutche     5     13 
7  hutchw     5      9 
8      kj     6     11 
9   koons     5      9 
10    p02     5     13 
11 p08-tp     5     15

Each “tagCt” is the number of Echinacea plants we sampled at each site. We will keep you posted!

Funding for this project was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources
Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources
(LCCMR).

Internship Project Update

I start the process of randomizing with the coin envelopes of re-checked achenes. The first part of the process is spreading the achenes out evenly across a circle that is sectioned off into 11 parts, each identified with a letter. Using a random letter generator, I select two sections of achenes. I put the rest of the achenes back into their original coin envelope. I sort and count the achenes that were selected by the random number generator into two groups, informative and uninformative. Achenes are uninformative if they are broken, underdeveloped, predated or ray achenes because these types of achenes are either known to be sterile or the seed could have fallen out during the cleaning process. I then put a label with identification information on both a white coin envelope and a clear plastic baggie. On the white envelope, I write the number of informative and uninformative achenes as well as my initials and the date. I put the uninformative achenes in this envelope and the informative achenes in the clear plastic baggie to be x-rayed. I record the data for the number of uninformative and informative achenes in the 2022 randomizing data sheets and put the coin envelopes back in their original box and the randomized ones in a new box so that they can be prepared for x-raying. This week I switched from the bbMost 2022 batch to a smaller batch that will be more manageable to complete during the remainder of my semester long internship with the Echinacea Project. I will be carrying out the randomization using this method after the rechecking and scanning of the new batch is completed.

Long Time No Flog, Here’s a Limerick!

Here in the lab at the Garden I’ve settled,
In demap and on ACE, oh boy, have I meddled.
New faces I’ve seen,
Not to mention achenes
And all through the trails I have pedaled.

The foliage here is quite a delight,
And from the Metra the city looks bright.
But Minnesota’s fire
Is my heart’s true desire,
The prescription to better my plight.

Project Update – Randomizing Achenes

This week I started the process of randomizing the echinacea achenes in preparation for being x-rayed. I am working with the 2022 achenes and the 2021 field data for my project to determine if health traits can be predictors of reproductive health in the following year. The purpose of randomizing the achenes is to get a sample of achenes to x-ray that is representative of the total number of achenes on that head. I start the process of randomizing with the already re-checked achene coin envelopes. The first part of the process is spreading the achenes out evenly across a circle that is sectioned off into 11 parts (on the right of the picture below). Once all of the achenes are spread out into sections, I use a random letter generator through the ACE website which gives me the two sections of achenes I am going to be working with. I move these achenes to the counting sheet (on the left of the picture below). I put the rest of the achenes back into their original coin envelope to keep them separate from the ones I am going to be sorting.

I examine each of the achenes on the counting sheet and sort them into the bottom numbered spots if they are uninformative or into the top numbered spots if they are informative. Achenes are uninformative for x-ray if they are broken, underdeveloped, predated or ray achenes. These are deemed uninformative because they are either known to be sterile or the seed could have fallen out if the achene was crushed during the cleaning process. I then label a white coin envelope with my initials, the date, and the number of uninformative and informative achenes in the batch. I put the uninformative achenes in this envelope and use a clear plastic baggie for the informative achenes that are going to be x-rayed. I put a label on both the envelope and clear plastic baggie with the assigned head number, batch number and if they are informative or not. I record the data in the 2022 randomizing data sheets and put the coin envelopes back in their original box and the randomized ones in a new box so that they can be put on x-ray sheets during the next step. So far I have randomized 24 out of approximately 500 heads in the bbMost batch for 2022!

Week 5 Update

It’s the beginning of my fifth week and so far I have learned the first three steps of the ACE process, cleaning echinacea heads, rechecking, and counting achenes. I have been practicing and refining all of these skills over the past few weeks and last week I participated in the trial rechecking assembly line with several other volunteers. As for counting, my official achene count is up to 14,485!

I am currently working on choosing my research topic for the remainder of my semester. The three ideas that I am choosing between are seed predation in E. angustifolia, climate change and flowering times of echinacea angustifolia, and physical characteristics of echinacea angustifolia that could be predictors of survival of the individual or reproductive fitness. I have chosen to use my time in the echinacea lab to investigate the relationship between the basal and cauline leaf characteristics and the survival of individual E. angustifolias. Pictured below is an example of a cultivar basal leaf rosette from an echinacea at Chicago Botanic Gardens. I am excited to explore this question further throughout the semester.

BEES!

The pollinator team has gone through the majority of vials collected from emergence traps this summer, and we have exciting news! We had about a 14% occurrence of bees (# of vials with bees/# vials total), which is much higher than expected, and we still have more vials to go! Below is the current counts of vials as of September 27, 2023.

# Vials Done: ~850

# Vials with Bees: ~122

# Bees: ~290

Habitat fragmentation decouples fire-stimulated flowering from plant reproductive fitness

This page has information about the Echinacea Project paper that was published in PNAS on 18 Sept 2023.

Updated 2 October 2023.

A flowering head of the narrow-leaved purple coneflower (*Echinacea angustifolia)*. Credit: Jared Beck

A prescribed burn of a prairie restoration. Credit: Stuart Wagenius.

Meet Our New CEO

This past week, Team Echinacea volunteer, Allen, hit a milestone of 1 million achenes counted. That’s a lot of achenes! This achievement has led to his promotion to Chief Echinacea Officer, a highly esteemed role. Thanks for all your hard work, Allen!