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Greetings from Chicago Botanic Garden! A new year is upon us and it is time to recap a busy 2014 summer. Over the next several weeks, we will be posting flog updates describing research projects from the summer and the status of the Echinacea Project’s long-term experiments. Stay tuned! Click here to Browse all of the updates!
After retiring from a career as a preschool teacher, Leslie began volunteering at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Although her initial volunteer work involved maintaining the outdoor gardens, she soon joined the Echinacea Project and has been a member of our volunteer team since 2009. In the lab, Leslie specializes in quality control. She checks each envelope of cleaned Echinacea material to ensure that it will produce clean scans and x-ray images. Leslie is an avid gardener and is currently enrolled in the Illinois Master Gardener course. She also enjoys attending vintage car races with her husband. This is one in a series of profiles recognizing the hard work and dedication of citizen scientists volunteering for the Echinacea Project at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Bill, a former state attorney, began volunteering at the Chicago Botanic Garden after his retirement in 2002. In his time at the Botanic Garden, Bill has removed invasive species from the Botanic Garden’s restored habitats, monitored rare plants through the Plants of Concern program, and helped clean and count Echinacea achenes. Since joining the Echinacea Project, he has counted over 340,000 achenes! Outside of the lab, Bill enjoys playing the piano and collecting stamps from around the world. This is one in a series of profiles recognizing the hard work and dedication of citizen scientists volunteering for the Echinacea Project at the Chicago Botanic Garden. The Echinacea Project depends on a team of volunteers to process Echinacea heads collected in the field. In 2014, our 19 volunteers devoted 1915.25 hours to the Echinacea Project! Below is a summary of hours for 18 volunteers (I will update this post once I track down hours for the last volunteer).
We are so thankful for this incredible group of people, the Echinacea Project would not be possible without their hard work and dedication!
Naomi began volunteering at the Chicago Botanic Garden in 2014 after working as an elementary school teacher and office manager. Since joining the Echinacea Project in 2014, Naomi has cleaned numerous Echinacea heads counted over 20,000 achenes! She appreciates the quiet lab work and the chance to learn about plant conservation. Outside of the lab, Naomi enjoys knitting, gardening, and spending time with her grandchildren. This is one in a series of profiles recognizing the hard work and dedication of citizen scientists volunteering for the Echinacea Project at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Dwight and Stuart broadcast native prairie seed in experimental plots p1 & p8 on Friday. At 34 °F (1°C) it was the warmest day in a month. It was also very windy –great for spreading seed! We broadcast Bouteloua curtipedula, Schizachyrium scoparium, Galium boreale, and Phlox pilosa directly on the snow. There wasn’t much snow and it was melting. We broadcast Lathyrus venosus in p1. We stored about half of each species, except L. venosus, in the Hjelm house to broadcast in the spring. (Hedging our bets.)
After teaching middle school science in New York, Lois moved to the Chicago area and began volunteering with the Chicago Botanic Garden. Since joining the Echinacea Project in 2009, Lois (aka “the Achene Queen”) has counted over 430,000 achenes! Before teaching the United States, Lois received a Fulbright Fellowship to teach science in Burma and, after her stay in Burma, she traveled around the world writing for the Junior Scholastic Magazine. She has visited over 70 different countries! This is one in a series of profiles recognizing the hard work and dedication of citizen scientists volunteering for the Echinacea Project at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Following a career in finance, Kathryn decided to pursue her long-time interest in gardening and began volunteering with the Chicago Botanic Garden. She started working in the outdoor gardens but soon switched to the research department in hopes of learning more about plants and plant science. Since joining the Echinacea Project in 2008, Kathryn has become a jack of all trades. She helps clean Echinacea heads and has counted over 150,000 achenes! Kathryn’s favorite pastimes are gardening and knitting. This is one in a series of profiles recognizing the hard work and dedication of citizen scientists volunteering for the Echinacea Project at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Shortly after retiring from her career as a program manager with the National Opinion Research Center, Suzanne took a course on native prairie plants at the Chicago Botanic Garden and began volunteering at the Garden. She initially worked to restore the Garden’s prairies before joining the Echinacea Project in the early 2000s. In the lab, Suzanne is usually busy cleaning Echinacea heads or preparing achenes for weighing and X-raying. She enjoys gardening and volunteers with a bird rescue organization as well as the Butterfly Monitoring Network in her spare time. This is one in a series of profiles recognizing the hard work and dedication of citizen scientists volunteering for the Echinacea Project at the Chicago Botanic Garden. This project investigates the role of three fundamental constraints on mate availability – temporal asynchrony, spatial isolation, and reproductive incompatibility – in remnant Echinacea angustifolia populations. During the summer of 2014, we conducted two studies related to The Mating Scene project. In the first study, we mapped 991 Echinacea plants and monitored the phenology of 1360 flowering heads across 31 remnants to quantify spatial isolation and flowering asynchrony. At the end of the season, we harvested 193 flowering heads from 25 remnants to assess seed set. In the second study, we performed 364 pollen crosses to characterize patterns of reproductive incompatibility within 10 remnants. With the data collected in 2014 and subsequent years, we aim to elucidate how the interactions between temporal asynchrony, spatial isolation, and reproductive incompatibility influence reproductive fitness in fragmented prairie remnants.
Start year: 2014 Location: Phenology in 31 total remnants, compatibility in 10 remnants Products: The phenology and compatibility datasets need to be made readyR. The harvested flowering heads are being processed at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Overlaps with: phenology in six remnants, fire and flowering at SPP |
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