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We mowed most of the CG this morning. Putting flags in went smoothly. It helped that we left many flags overwinter. We mowed according to the plan established two years ago. We started removing clippings & pulling flags that marked fl pla from 2008.
I noticed a plant I do not recognize at R46 P~903. Also, in R14 near P870 there is a patch of somethings that is starting to spread. We should determine if it’s a weed we should eliminate.
I heard a yellow-billed cuckoo from the farm house today. It was south of the farm house, perhaps in the South Field.
I went down to the common garden experimental plot around 9:30 or so. I didn’t see or hear any black-billed cuckoos.
My family drove from IL to MN on Thursday. We arrived late in the evening and didn’t have that much time to look around, but we did see a lot of tent caterpillars.
First thing Friday morning I went out to the common garden. I flagged plants and planned to mow a few walking paths because Caroline was coming to figure out which plants were going to flower in the inb1 experiment. I paused while mowing and heard a black-billed cuckoo. Then I noticed that there were a few flying around and I heard several calling. I am positive that there were six birds within earshot, but I think there may have been eight. I have never seen more than one a time. It was really neat. There was one calling east of the common Garden and three calling from the shrubs and boxelders along the west edge of the CG. They also flew across the corn field to shrubs next to the wetland west of the CG. Two birds were cavorting in the ditch and flew right next to me on their way to the cottonwood at the NW corner of the CG. Very cool!
It is good to be back in Minnesota. The common garden looks fine. The kids are in their element. I can’t wait for the field season to start! But first: unpack, set up computers, clean the Hjelm house, bring beds to Kensington, go to graduation party, get sleep.
The township supervisors (Joe Martinson, Carl Hamen, and Ken Anderson) drove by inspecting ditches. They are planning to cut trees on the township road N of the driveway because someone can’t get their combine through.
Three engineering students from Northwestern’s Engineering Design and Communication class built a specialized camera stand for the Echinacea project. Michelle Pineda, Christopher Moran, and HengJie Tan designed and built a giant tripod which we will use to improve our protocol for relocating Echinacea seedlings.
I told them about the paper maps we made by hand and how last summer Ben & Christine worked out a method to flag seedlings and make maps from digital images. To avoid issues with parallax they determined that photos had to be taken from fairly high up (at least 2.9 m from the ground).
Then the main problem was taking photos straight down from such a height. The hang-a-camera-from-a-pole method wasn’t stable enough (or safe). Michelle, Chris & Heng designed several scaled-down prototypes for their class project. Christine and I looked them over and then, based on our feedback and class feedback, they built this stand…
They presented the stand to their class and me on Saturday, along with a detailed report. I can’t wait to try it out! We will try it out this summer. We hope to avoid making paper maps altogether. We’ll see if it works!
I collected GPS coordinates of plants at the landfill on Saturday with our Trimble GeoXH. It froze as I was getting ready to go to the Riley site. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have a reference manual, just the Quick Start Guide. For future reference, here’s the link to manuals and perhaps other helpful resources…
http://www.trimble.com/terrasync_ts.asp?Nav=Collection-30232
Beware downloading PDF files from this site has crashed my browser many times.
I flagged 20 spots at the landfill site last Saturday. 18 are centered on Echinacea plants that flowered last year (blue flags). 2 are random locations (orange flags). Amy and Caroline are going there tomorrow to search for seedlings.
I noted other plants that were flowering on the east hill:
Zizia aurea
Lithospermum canescens
Sisyrinchium (1 pla)
Viola pedatifida
Astragalus sp.
Pediomelum esculentum – just about to start
Geum triflorum – done
Commandra umbellata – mostly done
On the west hill I noted these:
Senecio (1 pla)
Taraxacum officinale
Antennaria neglecta – done
We searched for Echinacea seedlings in six prairie remnants last week. We found some! Over 2+ days eight of us found 57 seedlings.
Ruth and Georgiana found 5 seedlings in this circle (41 cm radius) centered on plant 12034 at Steven’s approach.
We visited 87 circles. Ten of the circles were centered on random points in the remnants and the rest were centered on plants that flowered last year. The random points were all at least 1.5 m from every plants that flowered last year and within 4 m of one or more plants that flowered last year. The radii were 41 cm in 4 remnants and 50 cm in the other two. The total area searched was 51.3 square meters.
We also noted that there were about a gross other Echinacea plants in these circles. Some were tagged from previous year, others not.
We changed our protocol from last year and pairs differed in data they recorded and map notations. When we go back to the remaining nine sites in two weeks we should follow this protocol:
we must have at least two measurements to every seedling noted on the map
we must have at least one measurements to every basal plant noted on the map
make a map for every circle where any plant is found
note the style of every toothpick placed (round, square, colored, striped, etc)
note all plants that are determined to be just outside the circle on the map
We need consistent map notation for seedlings, basal plants, focal plants, flowering plants, tagged plants, nails
Also we need to get more pencils, thumbtacks, and cards with containers to hold it all.
Here are some photos of us searching and photos of places where we found some seedlings…
There were eight of us searching, Amber Eule-Nashoba, Ruth Shaw, and Stuart Wagenius searched Thursday & Friday. Georgiana May searched on Thursday. Gina Quiram searched on Friday. Caroline Ridley, Amy Dykstra, and Kate B searched on Friday (after driving across South Dakota to search for seedlings there earlier in the week). [Note to SW: Kate B is KD on datasheets.]
On Thursday we found one circle at SGC that was overrun by poison ivy. Lacking protection, Amber and I decided not to venture in. On Saturday I went back to the circle with neoprene gloves. I removed some poison ivy and then searched the circle. Alas, I found none.
One of our long-term experiments evaluates the effects of burn treatments on seedling recruitment and survival (see abstract here:http://echinacea.umn.edu/bib/echinacea_abstracts.htm#wagenius_et_shaw_RE). Here are some photos documenting how we prepare plots for burning…
Figuring out which plots need to be burned.
Mowing burn breaks.
Nice job, Brad.
Successfully burned plots.
The east half of Hegg Lake WMA was burned by the DNR. For our recruitment plots located within the burned region, we mowed burn breaks around plots we did NOT want to have burned.
The classic seedling search position.
Young Echinacea seedling–cotyledons only.
Larger seedling with a true leaf.
We marked seedlings with colored toothpicks, so we can re-find them in August, and again next summer. I hope to be able to learn about initial seedling establishment as well as seedling survival through the first two seasons.
This is my first trip up to Minnesota this year. My goal is to locate populations of the species I want to work on this summer.
I spent yesterday afternoon and this morning at Glacial Lakes State Park in Pope County. There was quite a bit blooming along the trail. There was a fairly common Viola with deeply divided leaves, unfortunately not the one I want to work with. I saw at least three Astragalus species, two of which are past their prime and another low-growing species with white flowers. Only a few of the white-flowered plants were in bloom. Geum triflorum is already in fruit as well as Antennaria, and Zizia is just starting to flower. There were two Lithospermums throughout the park, both common. One had lemon yellow crenulate corollas and the other had dark yellow flowers and darker foliage. I saw two Carex, one really short one and a taller one, both in bloom. I believe neither are the species I’m looking for. There was a lot of a white flowered caryoph, which got me excited because I thought it might be Silene antirrhina, but it wasn’t. I’m not sure what species it is, let alone genus. I stayed at Baby Lake campground last night because there had been a collection of Lomatium orientale near Baby Lake, but I had no luck in locating any plants. There are some dry hills a little farther from the trail that I wish I could explore, because they seem like the kind of habitat in which I might find a Lomatium.
This morning and early afternoon I spent around the farm and at some roadside sites. I checked out a gravel mine for Lomatium, but I didn’t find any. There was very little vegetation at all there. I did have luck finding the spot at Loeffler’s corner where Stuart said there would be some Stipa comata, but the clumps haven’t started forming inflorescences yet. Hegg Lake has mostly been burned, so my visit there was short. I did find a small hill near the road that escaped the burn. Nothing up there interested me except some Stipa, which is probably S. spartea and not S. comata. Overall, it’s been a disappointing day, especially because I couldn’t get into landfill. Perhaps tomorrow will be more fruitful.
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