Two weekends ago, Alex and I ventured into the heart of downtown to witness the annual dyeing of the Chicago River! I knew of this tradition prior to being in Chicago, so I was excited to witness the event in person!
The origin of the dyeing began in 1955 when Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley took office and began efforts to clean up sewage leaks in the river. A green dye was implemented to determine the source of the waste. Later, Daley proposed using the same dye to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day; however, the ambitious mayor wanted to try and dye parts of Lake Michigan green instead of the river! Eventually, Daley was persuaded by friend and business manager of the Chicago Plumbers Union to stick to the river for the holiday festivities. In 1962, Chicago city workers added almost 100 pounds of an oil-based dye to the river, beginning an annual tradition.
With festivities beginning at 10 am, Alex and I arrived early in the city and grabbed some breakfast. We made our way to the river around 9 am, and all the surrounding was packed! Luckily, we found a clear view tucked behind an Apple amphitheater where a presentation about the latest Apple technology was being given prior to the dyeing.
Every year, members of the Chicago Journeymen Plumbers Local Union 130 change the river to a bright, emerald green. These days, the dye used is a top-secret vegetable-based formula supposedly safe for the environment. We were surprised that the dye is actually a bright orangeish red powder! One boat releases the dye while a few other boats navigate the river and mix the dye.
Following the river dyeing is the annual St. Patricks’ Day parade. We saw many kilts, bagpipes, and even a marching band from Minnesota!
Bagpipes galore!
After a tiring day of St. Patrick’s Day festivities, we stopped to get some deep dish pizza.
The emerald green color only lasts in its brightest state for a few hours. However, I returned to the river this past weekend and hints of green still lingered!
Happy Spring! Yesterday was the equinox, so now it’s officially in spring. It has been an unseasonably warm winter in Chicago, so it has felt like spring for several weeks here already. Lindsey and I spotted snowdrops flowering at the Morton Arboretum back on February 18. Here at the Botanic Garden, the winter aconite and crocus plants and are currently in bloom. The skunk cabbages are also looking spiffy.
February snowdropsUp-close and personal crocusCheery winter aconite
In contrast, Minnesota has experienced the eighth snowiest winter on record, and our field site was buried under >1 foot of snow all winter. The snow still hasn’t all melted, so it will be a few weeks before the spring ephemerals make an appearance. Hopefully, we’ll get to experience spring twice: once in Illinois and once in Minnesota!
Skunk cabbage!The skunk cabbage is well camouflaged
We made it to the third batch for the cleaning procedure! After completing the first batch for randomization last week, we needed to pick things up on cleaning, and we hit another promising milestone. Ultimately, we wanted the cleaning process to stay well ahead of the randomization process, and we did manage to get ahead of ourselves some on randomization last week. We made much more progress in that department than I had envisioned, and we caught up a little too much concerning cleaning progress. We focused on cleaning all this week, and now here is where things stand. There is still much more to go, but we are steadily getting there.
Good news! We managed to get through randomizing the first batch! Now we are working our way through the second batch, and so far, things have been going pretty well in terms of pace and efficiency for both cleaning and randomization. Overall, we have seen a considerably wide range of head counts in the Liatris plants, but predation rates have been relatively low compared to what was observed in 2021’s data. Who knows what we will find in the next several batches, but I am pretty excited about the progress made so far and the results we may see. Hopefully, we will complete the next batch within the next few weeks, if not sooner.
So far, things are going well in the randomization step, but there is still quite a ways to go to complete the first batch of Liatris plants. However, we have counted a considerable number of achenes that have been eaten, and we are starting to get a rough estimate of the predation rate per Liatris plant. We are finding that there are, on average, 1 to 3 achenes eaten per plant out of a total of at least 30 randomly selected achenes. This equals approximately a 3 to 10 percent range for what has been found, but we have also found a few that have had either none or many achenes eaten. In light of these findings, I think we are heading in the right direction with the project, but hopefully, we will need to get much more work done to get through all five batches. Hopefully, we will have all the plants cleaned and randomized before the burning season (which starts in April), but it will take a lot to get to that goal within a little over a month’s worth of time. However, the good news is whether or not we meet our goal, there will be more than enough data to work with, and ultimately we can come to conclusions at the end.
In lab today, I started the process of randomization. This step in the project does take some time and patience, but all of it is worthwhile toward reducing bias and collecting achenes that can be x-rayed or identified as eaten. Similar to the randomization of achenes from Echinacea plants, sheets of randomization and counting grids are used. In addition, we also use plastic bags, white envelopes, stickers, tweezers, and a magnifying glass for this procedure. The first step involves pouring the achenes evenly across the randomization grid and ensuring all the achenes are placed in a specific square on the grid without being on the lines. Then using a randomized list of grid coordinates, we go down the list until we hit a coordinate (an example would be “B2”) with achenes present. We then examined each achene in the selected coordinate to see if there was any predation. If less than 30 achenes were counted in the coordinate, we randomly selected another one going down the randomization list. Once we categorized 30 achenes as either eaten or eligible for x-ray, we took our white envelope and plastic bag and put stickers on them. The envelope will store the eaten achenes while the plastic bag will contain the achenes ready to be x-rayed. On the envelope, we write the date, initials, and the quantities of achenes eaten, not eaten, and uninformative. After putting the achenes in their respective containers, we put them in a pile marked “randomized,” and we move on to the next one. As of today, we managed to get through a little over one third of our first batch, so we still have much work to do before proceeding onward.
The Echinacea Project is seeking collaborators interested in studying the ecological effects of fire within a highly fragmented prairie landscape. In 2021, we began experimentally burning patches of remnant prairie in western Minnesota to investigate how fire effects on plant reproduction and population dynamics may be mediated by fragmentation. In 2023, we are expanding our efforts to study fire and fragmentation effects on plant-pollinator interactions and ground-nesting bees in remnant and restored prairies. We hope to collaborate with other researchers who can capitalize on our landscape-scale experiment to address these and other ecological questions about effects of fire and fragmentation in tallgrass prairie. Please share with anyone you think may be interested!
We will host a brief informational Zoom meeting on February 22 at 10:30 AM CDT to share information about the experimental design and potential opportunities for collaboration. If you are interested in attending the informational meeting, send us an email (EchinaceaProject [at] gmail.com) and we will share a link to the Zoom meeting. If you are unable to attend live, we plan to record the informational meeting and can make this recording available.
After cleaning Liatris plants for a week, I am happy to say that the first of five batches are now finished. Now that the first batch is completed, the project’s next step is ready to begin. The process of randomization will be the next step in the project. This step will involve the random selection of achenes from each plant to avoid bias and separation of achenes that are either qualified for being x-rayed or not. Luckily, both groupings will have a role in the project’s studies. X-rayed achenes will inform us about pollination and reproductive outcomes for each head of a Liatris plant. On the other hand, non-x-rayed achenes can be assessed for why they cannot be x-rayed, including what types of damage the achenes have and if any predation occurred toward those achenes. My research question will focus specifically on seed predation, so using the non-x-rayed achenes will be essential. I am still working on a finalized research question relating to seed predation, but seeing the progress made so far has me excited about what will come next in the project and toward finalizing my research question.
I am happy to say that the Liatris Project is off to a good start. After taking inventory of all the Liatris plants this past week, I got to start the cleaning process. A total of 293 Liatris plants have been counted in the inventory, and all have been sorted randomly into 5 different batches. Today, I got to start cleaning the ones in the 1st batch, and while cleaning, I noticed several similarities and differences compared to cleaning Echinacea plants. Overall, I found that Liatris achenes were much easier to extract from the plant than Echinacea achenes, but counting them proved much more challenging. To make things easier, random selection sheets of different numerical ranges were arranged that listed random numbers from left to right down the sheets. Using these sheets, I could randomly pick out a flower head and count the number of achenes associated with that head. I also had to observe if any achenes were missing from each head on a Liatris plant. I recorded the total number of heads per plant and the number of heads with no achenes, some achenes, or all achenes missing. After taking these recordings, I removed all the other achenes present on the Liatris plants and sorted them into an envelope. Any chaff leftover got put into a separate envelope labeled as “chaff.” So far, a handful of plants have been cleaned, but there is still a long way to go.
Today will mark the beginning of a new project that I will conduct analyzing Liatris aspera (Rough Blazing Star). Like with the Echinacea Project, this project will look at reproductive quantities of Liatris and the potential factors for influencing plant reproduction. At the moment, a specific research question is still in the works and the actual project requires some introductory steps that need to be completed. In the lab, I conducted inventory checks for the Liatris plants that have been harvested and made sure their were not any errors in what was taken into inventory. While doing the checking, I had Leah help me make sure everything was accounted for. Trying to do this alone would have been frustrating so I send my absolute thanks for helping me out with this part. As for the next steps in the project, I hope to begin cleaning the Liatris plants next week and start to come up with a potential research question in the near future. Very exciting things to come!
