Today was another great day on Team Echinacea. This morning we continued our work on Q2, and we continued to make significant progress. We measured many plants and found at least five new plants in the experimental site. After a hearty lunch and a short time marveling at ice formations in a water bottle, Amy Dykstra gave a presentation on her research, which included her study of local adaptation of Echinacea. The afternoon was filled with preparations for IS projects (for the Wooster folks) and independent projects for the rest of us. Leah and Laura quickly became adept at catching pollinators, but were not so successful at transferring the collected pollen to fuchsin jelly. The rest of us hunkered down on our computers, read some literature, prepared project proposals and thought about how hard it would be to use NMR and IR to analyze pollen.
Leah regales us with stories of captured pollinators and attempts at melting fuchsin jelly on a car dashboard.
The exciting news of the day is that we found our first flowering Echinacea in P1 and at Elk Lake Road East! Tomorrow we will find out how many more Echinacea are flowering.
The second flowering Echinacea (found at Elk Lake Road East)!
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