Presenting on Pollen Interference at the Carleton Summer Research Symposium

Hi again, Flog!

This fall, I had the opportunity to present a poster about my recent field research on pollen interference at the Carleton College Summer Research Symposium on October 19. This poster focused on the parts of my experiment that tested whether false sunflower (Heliopsis helianthoides) pollen interferes with reproduction in Echinacea by causing styles to shrivel. My findings suggested that this style shriveling results from a cooperation between dame and sire identity, such that applying pollen from any one false sunflower might succeed in causing style shriveling on one Echinacea plant but not another. This poster summarizes some interesting and promising early results, and I am looking forward to analyzing the presented data further in the coming months. Thank you to everyone at the Echinacea Project who helped make this experiment possible!