It’s raining today. All day. After a long, dry summer, autumn has finally arrived, and it has brought with it some much-needed precipitation. I love the rain, but it does make it somewhat difficult (and very muddy) to conduct fieldwork. Instead of braving the elements, we have been using rainy days to work on our “inside activities.” For me, this mostly means cleaning achenes.
When I say cleaning, I don’t mean that the achenes themselves are dirty. Rather, they are mixed in with chaff left over from the head cleaning process. When we clean achenes, we are simply removing this chaff, which includes receptacular bracts, involucral bracts, corolla tubes, and ray florets. Once we have isolated the achenes, they are ready to be scanned and counted.
Cleaning achenes is a simple, almost meditative process. It requires only a glass tray and a good pair of tweezers. To do it, pour a mix of achenes and chaff from a coin envelope onto the tray. Use the tweezers to carefully extract each achene from the pile of chaff (be careful not to overlook small or misshapen achenes). Scoop the achenes into a labeled envelope and the chaff into another. Repeat. Another achene cleaner will inspect the chaff to confirm that no achenes were missed.
There’s still a lot to be done before the field season is over. We need to finish harvest, revisit “can’t finds” and some total demo records, and finish “DeMopUp.” The next two weeks will probably be a scramble to complete all these tasks and tie up any loose ends we discover along the way. But for now, it’s just me, the achenes, some good music (played just loudly enough to be audible but not distracting) and the occasional snap of a popping viola pod. I’m happy!
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