Over the last few days we have had the privilege of being visited at lunchtime by the local woodchuck that we have named… Robert (Bobby) Flay.
In honor of Robert, I have put together a little limerick about our little marmot.
There once was a woodchuck, you see,
Who couldn’t cook, no recipe.
He’d chop and he’d dice,
But it never turned nice,
His meals tasted like old fallen tree!
This morning we split. I was lucky to be part of a group with Jak where we searched for pollinating bees. We tried a new method to cool them down quicker. But, it would appear that we cooled them down a little too quickly. None of our bees survived our pollen collection. They made the ultimate sacrifice for science!
In the afternoon we bagged and collected pollen, then stacked our discarded data sheets in a pile that reached the height of the International Space Station. We look forward to reaching the Moon by next week!
Much hubub around Hjelm this morning. After a mishap with some duplicate datasheets, members of team echinacea put on their thinking caps to resolve some pollen and nectar mysteries. Using clues like handwriting, date, parsimonious location in tube stands, we put this case to rest. And we won’t get fooled again.
The goats also arrived over the weekend. I can’t help but wonder if they had anything to do with this….
We started our day off by splitting into teams and heading out to collect pollen from a few Echinacea heads. Daytona and his team had a volunteer trying to hitch a ride to the site on the side of the truck (a very adorable volunteer at that). The would be tiniest member of team Echinacea was removed safely due to a lack of sufficient credentials and inability to meet BF standards.
Once we finished out the morning collecting pollen we headed back out in the afternoon to collect nectar and I saw this echinacea with a large head that looked like a strawberry. Though tempted, I did not taste to see whether it was an echinacea or a strawberry.
We had a dreary, drizzly day in Douglas county, but that didn’t stop the bugs and other critters from enjoying the cool weather. Other critter sightings from the day include and are not limited to: deer, snakes, chipmunks, geese, ducks and other various birds, stink bugs, dragonflies, crickets, lots of mosquitoes and flies, and of course Team Echinacea members.
A beetle was seen allegedly stealing pollen from Echinacea Angustifolia this morning at Staffanson Prairie preserve. The insect’s motives are currently unknown and the suspect is still on the loose.
The crime in progress
Witnesses say the crime occurred around 9:40, when the critter began apparently attacking Angustifolia’s anthers unprovoked.
“It was like nothing I’d ever seen,” said Amorpha Canascens, Angustifolia’s neighbor. “My forby friend was just going about their business trying to reproduce when this cranky creature started pocketing all their pollen for itself.”
Officials have reported that 2023 is a relatively low flowering year for our favorite prairie flower in the area, so Angustifolia may not have had many mates anyway. Still, they would have liked to have had a chance to reproduce.
“A whole day of pollen production wasted! This is going to throw off my synchrony stats for sure,” Angustifolia said.
Despite the hardship, Angustifolia remains committed to their goal.
“I still have some more flowering days in me yet,” they said. “And for every selfish beetle, there’s a benevolent bee to help me out. Because in the prairie, we look out for each other.”
We went on a wild hunt this morning. Team Echinacea (or euthanasia/youth in Asia) members were prepped with pruners, pollinators exclusion bags, and flags.
Everyone worked together to find Echinacea! The summer team learned how to record data using our handy visors ( a memory of the 90s).
We then went to place pollinator exclusion bags on Echinacea pallida. Readers, please note that E. pallida is not the same as our beloved Echinacea angustifolia. Height is one key difference we use to distinguish the two plants. Angustifolia is a short king.
Afterward, we went on a decapitation spree. See below to view a picture of our winnings. Members of the team were enjoying seeing E. Pallida fall off its petal-stal.
Today the team took Echinacea Demos. We got trained in on the different scenarios we could see in the field and got to work. We set pollinator bags on the twenty closest Echinacea Pallida plants to a random point, taking demos as we went, afterwards we decapitated any other Echinacea Pallia nearby. All was right in the world during lunch, but halfway through updating our team norms the sky looked very gray and the thunder got quite loud. We moved to the porch and it started raining. I’m sure the plants were thrilled. Many members spent the afternoon working on their projects.
