Monday morning science

It's June; where did May go?  Glad some early seed collection was done before our 2.25 inch rains came this past Friday and Saturday. Front ushered in some unseasonably cool weather, cool enough to send the kitty-girls back to our bed. Great news from the refrigerator! Seeds of yellow foxgloves (Aureolaria & Dasistoma) are germinating after several weeks of vernalization! Seed germination has sometimes been (and still is) a big problem with some of the species being studies. These are green, parasitic plants and they are going to be given different tree seedling hosts to assess the interaction from the perspective of both parties. Should be great fun. This afternoon will be more field work that now becomes even more pressing because you don't want long periods of time to pass between data gathering in plant communities during the growing season. And do they ever grow! Already marker poles are disappearing into the prairie canopy especially where the plots were nutrient enhanced. Always something to do this time of year.

Fun galore!

Today we'll have some fun!  If you have some free time, stop by and join the fun!  It's harvest season and it's how we get our data.  Last week the above ground portions of this experiment were harvested, but now it's the below ground portion that gets harvested.  Now here's the thing about roots; they branch and branch again and again and again.  And they really hang on to soil, intimately intertwined you might say.  Extracting roots from soil is never easy especially when you want to save the soil and use it for phase two.  A student is also harvesting their experiment and is washing the soil away from the roots, which while a tough job, is much easier than what we are going to try.  This is the sort of thing that makes you want to be a tube-sucking gel jockey.  It's soil, not dirt.  Dirt is something that you find under your finger nails and in certain types of books and movies, but somehow in the process of doing this, soil becomes dirt.  TPP hopes he can find his apron. 

Spring break - field season!

Well, one thing is pretty certain, spring break is next week and very, very few undergrads will be on campus.  As usual, spring break will be when the Phactor gears up for field season.  A couple of undergrads are involved with seed germination experiments: the effect of fire on germination of an invasive legume, allelopathic (chemical warfare) interference of germination of native prairie species by an invasive legume (notice a theme?).  Our first task, as it is every year, is to find our long-term study plots, whose locations in general are known, but in the exact specific, they can be hard to find.  Prairies are dynamic places, and things happen.  Who knows why?   Things get buried, things get dug up, especially if they mark the corner of a study plot.  And with an advance spring, the earliest suspects will be sprouting very soon, especially since the prairie was burned in the fall so nothing remains to burn this spring.  The blackened soil will also warm up a bit sooner too.  It's strange in the spring without any vegetation, when you can see the whole plot so easily, and when the 30 inch PVC pipes stick up so conspicuously, so it's hard to imagine how hard these will be to find (close to impossible) when the prairie vegetation reaches 7-8 feet in August.  And of course with all of this to do, the book looms, and the need to get it finished ASAP.  It'll be a great spring break.