It’s heating up in western Minnesota! Temperatures and humidity were high today. In the morning, much of Team Echinacea performed the pollinator observations we learned about yesterday with Dr. Ison. These involved recording the pollinator with a camcorder, describing its activities, and attempting to ID to morphospecies level.

In the afternoon, emergence trapping crews had a great session of deployments and retrievals, while others worked on phenology in the common garden plots, and others gathered nectar. It’s exciting to see new species starting to bloom: two major species of prairie clover are just getting started, as is the wild bergamont and wild licorice.

Once everyone was back from the field, we enjoyed some ice cold watermelon and headed home. Another great day in the field!