« The Echinacea Project

July 15th: Phenology Phriday

Dear Flog,

Spotted this Andrena having a snack while doing phenology this morning

Today was a good day, beginning with phenology in the morning. I went to the northwest remnant sites with Amy. Although the morning was mostly uneventful, we did encounter the sheriff of Grant County as we were pulling over to check on the plants at Northwest of Landfill. He asked if he could offer us any help, but when we told him that we were studying plants he said that we were on our own! Oh well. We finished up and returned to the Hjelm House for lunch.

At lunch, we spent a while talking about P2 and measuring in the experimental plots. There are 8 experimental plots, so this will be a big job for the rest of the summer. Fortunately, we’ve already measured P8 (plot 8) when we measured the q2 and q3 seedlings. The process for measuring adult plants is pretty similar to what we did earlier in the summer. We went out to p2 this afternoon and worked in pairs to measure the plants there. We work in teams as we go through the rows, position by position. We still have a ways to go, but we made a good dent today.

Since it was rainy earlier this week, those of us living at Town Hall will head out for a quick round of pollinator observations tomorrow morning. I’m heading to bed now so that I will be ready to go then!

Goodnight,

Leah

Saving phenology for a rainy day

Today we all divided up to complete phenology at all sites but were interrupted by thunder. We all hurried back to the Hjelm house to wait it out. After seeing the closest lightning strike most of us have ever experienced we decided it would be best to wait until 4 to go back out. Some of the taller members of the team were concerned for their safety still & suggested short members go out first because they’re “farther away from a lightning strike”. Ruth visited today to help with phenology and also made tags during our lightning break. During lunch Lea updated us on her independent project. She wants to look at how burn years affect co-flowering species of Echinacea and settled on other composites. Because they aren’t clonal it’s easy to track individual flowers and Lea feels comfortable recognizing when composites are flowering. She’s going to track when composites along a transect in Staffanson begin and end flowering and compare the burned unit to the non-burned unit. Jennifer helped clarify the difference between Andrena and Melissodes to other Lea and me. Although she described their different appearances she told us the biggest difference is their foraging behavior atop Echinacea. Eventually we finished phenology for the day and headed home to eat Amy and Laura’s wild rice soup.

Female Melissodes

Highlights of the day:

Jennifer brought her munchkin, Zachary, to work. It’s never too early to join Team Echinacea.

Ruth brought an amazing rhubarb bundt cake and Amy, Lea and Laura fought over the last piece (James took the second to last all for himself).

Playing “was that thunder or a truck?”

Keeping it 100 (percent on screen)

Hi world,

The first big issue of the day was the lone radish found in the fridge today. We tried to peddle it onto everybody on the crew, but most people thought it looked too smooshy, and nobody wanted to smoosh. Amy and I eventually split it in half and ate it before jumping in the car. Picture attached. It turned out to actually be one of our spicy radishes. I think that was appropriate because today was a spicy day.

Spicy radish. Would you have eaten it?

This day started out with distant sheets of rain that slowly crept up to base at the Hjelm House, forcing us to do indoor work. When the rain cleared around 9:30, crew members did bee observation videos. Some people were viewing bees for the first time, others were going out for their second stints. We saw some of the same patterns today that we say two days ago — Laura saw over 20 bees at Steven’s Approach, while other sites were pretty destitute. Other crew members worked on mapping and pulling hawkweed for a hawkweed eradication experiment in experimental plot 1. Also, we finished collecting our qGen2 experiment data for the year, freeing up more time and plastic toothpicks for other projects.

At lunch, to supplement our training yesterday on flower deformities, we talked about our own various human deformities, including dislocated fingers, weird moles and warts, and bruised ribs. We may make a fun little trip this weekend into Alexandria to visit an urgent care facility. From there, most of the crew split off to do phenology and GPSing. Alyson went to the bog, and Leah finished setting up plots for her own pollinator observations, and the family stayed behind to weed (including some gnarly thistles). I went up the Landfill bloc geotagging with Alex, with Abby and Lea doing phenology at the sites ahead of us and catching over 50 new buds. We GPSed over 60 flowers alone at Around Landfill and got over 80 flowers total. James and Will were able to finish mapping five sites on their own. All of this done with zero people getting electrocuted on the electric fence near the Landfill.

Alex narrowly escapes death, checking a tag for an an Echinacea under the electric fence at Around Landfill.

At home, Leah and Amy made dank filafel and salad. We all discovered that mint works just as well as dill in tzatziki sauce. After that, we played Farkle well into the night, with Amy “Farkle Queen” Waananen winning two games, the first one in a wild horse race with Lea “The Farkle Hustler” Richardson. We look forward to our Friday Pizza and Farkle night tomorrow, followed by more Farlke-related activities over the long weekend.

It’s Friday, gotta’ find seedlings on Friday.

Today we returned to q3 and continued searching for Echinacea seedlings. The seedlings found in q3 from yesterday and today totaled to 432 individuals! We’ve searched 556 of the 849 meter sections. Woohoo! We probably have one more half-day of searching. This total is lower than last year which we hypothesized could be related to the rough winter.

Lea and Alex found a seedling. Woot!

We only worked a half day today and headed home around noon. Kensington is getting ready for Rune Stone Days this weekend. We are looking forward to the pancake breakfast tomorrow!

Other notable events:

Half of the lower jaw of a rodent was found in q3.

Rodent remnants.

A lively game of “Is that Thunder or a Big Truck?” was played.
The paparazi spotted James riding riding back to town hall after work.

James, the lean, mean bike-riding machine

July 26: Sunday Adventures in Alex

With three of us out of town, and Danny occupied with his girlfriend Lauren’s visit, it was a pretty quiet weekend at the town hall. After a particularly lazy Saturday, Lea, Taylor, Gina and I decided on Sunday morning to spend the day in Alex. First we went to Art in the Park, which was a much bigger event than I had imagined! We listened to live music, ate free samples, and admired the work of local artists (some of which featured Echinacea!) For lunch, we went to Mi Mexico, which was yummy despite the fact that I ordered the most boring item on the menu. (I guess I didn’t realize that a bean burrito would literally just be beans in a tortilla…oh well.) After lunch, we stopped at an antique shop and spent hours getting lost in the labyrinth of shelves and rooms until we were told that the store was closing and we had better check out. We made one last stop at the grocery store, and then returned to the town hall with our wallets slightly emptier but happy to have made the most of our day off.

Spotted this beauty at Art in the Park!

Week 1 With Team Echinacea

What a week it has been! I arrived last Sunday to Kensington, MN and moved into the Town Hall. It’s no longer used as a public building, it was converted into a residence and is holding 9 Team members this summer. My room is a newly added loft space overlooking one of the basketball nets in the main room.

I started my first day on the project learning the ropes. I had a great introduction with “searching forStipa”. What does that mean? Well, looking for a specific grass in the tallgrass prairie. It was difficult to spot at first (and still kind of is) but it is a very distinctive grass. Not much is known about the biology of this grass which is why it was planted in the experimental Common Garden so that it could be observed and recorded. Can you find the Stipa in the picture below? Follow my Twitter feed @summerofscience for the answer (posted July 2).

I have travelled outside of the Common Garden to Hegg Lake twice, once with Marie and once with Kory. I helped Marie measure her F1 (first generation) hybrid Echinacea. I went with Kory and visiting scientist Jennifer Ison to learn how to capture and identify pollinators. I also visited Staffanson with Sarah B and Stuart. We tagged and flagged flowering Echinacea and Stuart gave us a tour of the prairie.

I am learning lots of new science and gaining valuable field experience. A typical day starts around 7 AM, I don’t need to get up this early but it lets me take my time getting ready and having breakfast. We carpool to work which starts at 8:30. Stuart gives us the run down for the day and we usually start off with Stipa or Echinacea searches in the morning until lunch. After lunch, we work on our individual projects until the end of the day around 4:30. Since I do not have a project yet I spent this week learning about current projects and visiting the other field sites.

Conditions in the field are, well…different from the classroom or a lab. Mornings are nice and cool, but if it is damp the mosquitos are swarming. Since insects are of interest in this project we cannot wear repellant in the field. The skies have been clear lately, so as the day goes on it warms up quite a bit and the rays from the sun are pretty strong. We have to wear long pants because we are in a tall grass prairie with insects, snakes, and prickly plants. If we don’t want to get our arms scratched or bit we should wear long sleeves. Long sleeves + long pants + sun = sweaty scientists. I’ve ditched the long sleeves but I have paid the price with a few scratches here and there.

Since it was a big and eventful week for I treated myself to a Saturday getaway to hike at Maplewood State Park about 70 miles away. I have never been to a forest that remote before and although I stayed on the trails I still saw a lot of wildlife. Turtles, dragonflies, birds, muskrats, and maple trees, of course. Even with a map and compass I still managed to get lost but I was able to admire the beauty of nature until I found my way back.

After the hike I was starving and craving Thai food, something you can’t get near Kensington. So I drove to Fargo, North Dakota (yes, like the movie) and is the largest city within 100 miles of Kensington. I didn’t see much to do after lunch and was getting tired after hiking all day so I made the 93 mile trip back to Kensington.

Don’t forget to check in for daily updates from the rest of the team on the flog and stay tuned for my next post.

-Miss Z

Field trip to MN (22 – 26 May)

I drove from the Chicago Botanic Garden to our field site in western Minnesota hoping for a window of appropriate burning weather on Thursday afternoon or Friday afternoon. I also brought 297 Echinacea seedlings to plant as part of an experiment that investigates hybridization between native and non-native Echinacea. Several gallons of side-oats grama grass seed were waiting to be hand broadcast at two sites after the burn.

Why burn?
We want to burn our large Echinacea “common garden experiment.” In this abandoned field we have planted about 14000 individual Echinacea plants, starting in 1996, and measured their growth and flowering every year. We have burned this ~6 acre plot every other spring from 1998 to 2008. The weather didn’t cooperate in 2010, so we burned in 2011. We are trying to burn this year! Burning in the spring really increases the chance that an Echinacea plant will flower. We are planning a big crossing experiment this summer, so we want as many plants to flower as possible. Also, burning sets back the weeds–and that is a good thing.

Here’s the quick recap of major activities.
1. Packing
2. Driving to MN
3. Preparing to burn
4. The burn
5. Seeding after the burn
6. Preparing to plant
7. Planting
8. Seeding the phenology plot
9. Driving to IL

Dwight makes sure the fire stays where it belongs

Read the gory details…

1. Packing
I loaded the truck with lots of field equipment to use during the summer. The seedlings in the hybridization experiment fit in three trays. I had two trays of “extra” seedlings that were still hanging on from Jill’s agar/blotter seed germination experiment. For the burn, I brought three backpack sprayers, the DNR burn permit, and batteries for radios. I forgot to bring a back-up drip torch.

2. Driving to MN
The drive to Minneapolis was generally uneventful, which is just what one wants when driving an 18-year old truck. Very early on Thursday I drove to the site. Shortly before arriving, I saw two Sandhill Cranes landing in a wet field near Holmes City. I think that’s the first time I’ve seen cranes on the ground in Douglas County–auspicious! I should mention that I also saw a Common Loon and Pelicans, which are common every summer in Douglas County. Seeing them makes for an auspicious day too.

3. Preparing to burn
Thursday morning the ground was wet and the wet grass duff (fuel) didn’t look very promising for burning. The erosion in the surrounding corn fields indicated it had rained a lot. Our rain gauge confirmed that showing 3.65 inches (93 mm) of precipitation in the previous week. Light winds and cool temps weren’t helping dry it out, but the sun and low humidity offered a glimmer of hope. It’s rather stressful trying to predict burn weather and decide whether to rally folks to make a long trip to help burn.

The plot before the burn

Dwight and I began preparations for the burn. Just after noon, it looked like the fuel might dry out enough to burn and the weather forecast looked great, so I let folks know that we were going to attempt to burn in late afternoon. I should add that the fire forecast for Friday was getting worse, so that a burn was going to happen on Thursday or never (well, June or 2014).

Here’s our pre-burn to do list:
Prepare burn break (mower, weed whip, chain saw)
Fill water tank on truck (70 – 80 gallons)
Put six buckets in tractor trailer
Set up hoses [I forgot to set up hoses this year, thus this list]
Fill backpack sprayers
Fill drip torch(es)
Get matches
Activate burn permit
Call sheriff
Call neighbors
Walk burn break with crew & place buckets
Check radios

What to wear during a burn:
100% cotton long-sleeved shirt and long pants
Hat
Leather boots (over ankle, if you have them)
Leather work gloves

4. The burn
Amy, Brad, Dwight, Jean, and I conducted the burn and it went smoothly. Amy made a nice post with photos. The burn was slow and thorough. Ignition initiated at 5:20 and we were done at 8:20. Winds were light ESE ~ 8 mph. We had a great dinner afterward.

Amy keeps the fire from jumping the road

Brad and Amy through the smoke

A slow and thorough burn

Post burn to do list:
Call sheriff
Put everything away–dry out tanks
Broadcast seed

Some grass is still green right after the fire

5. Seeding after the burn
On Friday I hand broadcast about 2 gallons (8 liters) of native grass seed. More warm season grasses will provide fuel for future fires! The Soras chattering in the neighboring wetland kept me company. Here’s the seed sources–keeping it local!
grocery bag: Bouteloua curtipendula from cg1 10 Aug 2012
grocery bag: Bouteloua curtipendula from Krus 14 Aug 2012
#1 bag: Bouteloua curtipendula (& some Elymus canadensis) from Backhill 19 Aug 2012
#2 bag: Bouteloua curtipendula from Backhill 19 Aug 2012
#2 bag: Bouteloua curtipendula from cg1 22 Aug 2012

Much of the grass that was green right after the fire is now brown

I found this Sharpie while broadcasting side-oats grama

6. Preparing to plant

Next job was getting those seedlings in the ground! The forecast was for lots of rain during the upcoming week, which is great for seedlings, and for lots of rain in the afternoon, which is not so great for a person planting seedlings. I had to hurry.

I was quite efficient, except that I paused to watch a pair of Trumpeter Swans at Hegg Lake WMA–another first for me in Douglas County. I got a very nice look at the birds up close and saw the shape and color of their bills–straight and all black. I didn’t hear them, so I’m not 100% positive they were trumpeters. Tundra swans apparently look similar, but I haven’t seen them up close for years.

I chose a uniform location in an area that was planted with warm season grasses in 2000 for this experimental plot. I was considering mowing the area, or at least the rows to facilitate making straight rows and putting the plugs in, but I decided against it.
I laid out 300 planting locations (10 m x 30 m) with meter tapes and pin flags. A 9m x 29m grid would be sufficient for 300 locations, but I don’t like to plant at 0m on a tape and I planned to leave a few flags at locations with no plants.

Setting up planting locations

7. Planting

These seedlings all originate from plants that flowered at Hegg Lake last summer. Shona conducted the summer experiment and prepared the seeds for germination. Read about Shona’s project. Jill germinated the seeds this spring and measured the seedlings multiple times. Read about Jill’s project.

I ended up planting one tray (~100 seedlings) on Friday before getting rained out. Planting in the light rain worked for a while, but it was slow. When it really started coming down, I bagged it.

tools of the trade

On Saturday morning I saw the pair of Trumpeters at the flooded field SW of MN27 & CR1. The nearby Canada Geese were much smaller. A black tern flew overhead. When I arrived at Hegg, I saw fresh truck tracks and what looked like a can of beer and a pair of underwear right in the middle of the parking area. They were not there the day before! Upon closer inspection I realized that it was a can of Nos energy drink, not beer.

Saturday proved to be cold but not too cold. It was 54 degrees F and very windy. I wore nitrile gloves and that kept my hands warm. I planted almost twice as fast as I did when it was raining. The Bobolinks kept me entertained all morning with their bubbling songs.

8. Seeding the phenology plot Saturday 1:11 – 1:42 pm
Right after finishing planting I went to the phenology plot and broadcast some native seeds that we collected last fall. I broadcast the seed fast and it dispersed well in the strong and gusty wind. There is a new fox den with a big pile of dirt in the middle of the plot. The only plants I saw flowering were Sambucus, Dandelion, and Antennaria. I’m sure others have been flowering, but it was overcast and cold and I was moving fast. As I left Hegg Lake a wild Turkey walked out in the road in front of my truck. So nice to see.

I planted ~ 2.5 gallons of seed from three collections:
1. Bouteloua curtipendula from Hegg Lake WMA 13 Aug 2012 (#4 bag). 2. Bouteloua curtipendula from NE corner of Hegg Lake WMA 27 Aug 2012 (grocery bag). 3. Schizachyrium scoparium (& some Bouteloua curtipendula) from along CR 15 at Hegg Lake WMA 16 Sept 2012 (grocery bag).

9. Driving to IL
I left around 5:45 AM on Sunday. As I climbed in the truck I heard a Great-crested flycatcher–first of the season–so, I suspected it would be an auspicious trip. It was a boring drive, just the way I like it. I talked to myself about mating isolation and asynchrony to help prepare for writing a proposal to NSF on this topic.

Postscript. I didn’t have time to plant a few of Maria’s left-over Dichanthelium plants. Jean said she would be glad to plant them in her prairie garden.

Maria’s Dichanthelium plants. Some have been exposed to cold temperatures for the past month or so.

Tuesday, July 31st

Oops!! I had an entry written for Tuesday, just waiting for the obligatory photograph, but somehow my title was published and nothing else was saved. So here is the delayed version of Tuesday’s events, maybe the extra hindsight will shed a different light on our activities…
We started off the morning with an hour of rechecks (Stuart and Gretel have limited the amount of time we are allowed to spend on them to limit the frustrating and demoralizing experience of looking for plant after plant and rarely finding any trace). It’s not all bad though, because among the strings of can’t finds, there is, on rare occasion, a tiny, fuzzy, triple lined leaf of echinacea peaking through the grasses (or sometimes a large and blatantly obvious one), and finding one of those is always worth a shout of joy.
Later, Maria, Gretel and I returned to the common garden to remeasure a few other plants whose measurements didn’t quite seem normal. We searched in vain for a black head someone recorded a no twist tie as being on the same head as, removed a few staples where there had been no records of staples ever being placed, and remeasured a head whose height had been recorded as 95cm (normal for pallida maybe, but not angustifolia).
In the afternoon Katherine, Jill, and Stuart took the GPS out to finish demography at On 27.
The rest of the day we spent working on independent projects. We’ve found out that our posters need to be finished by 10am next Monday so I think we all appreciated a little extra time. I spent most of my time on R again, it would probably take me less time if Stuart just told me exactly what to do, but figuring out what I can on my own is more rewarding, and this way I actually understand what I’m doing and will be able to figure out R again next time I need it. Kelly and I did spend about two or three hours trying to figure out how to show the number of flowers that had started flowering by each day, and after a few premature high fives, and one or two nudges in the right direction from Stuart we eventually produced a beautiful graph. At least it will be once Kelly changes the axis labels from accumprop and sDints and makes it so those of us who don’t know what those mean can make sense of what it means.

Working out in the common garden recently the views have been changing. Goldenrod is in full bloom along the edges and Big Blue Stem and Indian Grass have sent up tall stems (culms) and begun flowering. Some of the culms reach up above my head and I makes me wonder what it would have been like to walk through a prairie full of them.
Indian Grass- Sorghastrum nutans