Field day, chartreuse shirts, and lots of new blooms.

Tomorrow is the annual Turfgrass Field Day at the AJ Powell Turf Research Station, where several hundred turf managers, horticulturalists, greenhouse operators, landscapers, highway maintenance people, and anyone else connected to the turf and landscape industry come together for a long day of continuing education.

My lab loves Field Day.

Field Day for us consists of a hanging out in the great outdoors, giving lectures on our research, and interacting with the end-users for the data we produce.  We are able to give people advice for managing pests in the urban landscape, and we usually get very valuable feedback from the crowds with whom we speak.

We also get free donuts, coffee, and lunch, which is always delicious and very welcome.

And.

New turfgrass science shirts for all the presenters, which have ranged in the past from slick, black athletic shirts, to gray T-shirts, to this year's choice, delivered today:  chartreuse polos.

The color isn't really coming through in all its super-bright glory, so here's an example which more accurately reflects the color of the matching shirts that my lab of six grown adults will be wearing:

Photo credit: Mark-Anthony and Christine Rice  

I'm actually kind of fond of the color, but we originally thought it was going to be hunter green.  Some of the more grown up folks are not quite as excited about the slightly silly color as me.

It might be a grumpy troupe of six adults wearing the same chartreuse shirts tomorrow morning.

ANYWAY

The plots are going to be on full display tomorrow morning to about three hundred people, and they are looking good.

New species blooming right now:

Prairie coneflower

 Purple coneflower

Black-eyed Susan

And plains coreopsis!

The bergamot is getting ready to start putting out its first lilac tendrils!

We even had a few visitors, like this Speyer's cucullia caterpillar.  I was initially fooled in my excitement into thinking this was a Monarch caterpillar, but quickly realized that I would never find a Monarch on fleabane (pictured here), but only on milkweed.

BUT

I did find an adult Monarch happily foraging on lance leaf coreopsis!

All of this is very exciting for me and my lab, and I can't wait to show off the plots to the public tomorrow morning.

Even if the only thing more colorful than the Operation Pollinator plots will be our shirts.

First Blooms for Operation Pollinator 2013!

The Operation Pollinator plots are up an running!  I am very relieved--I thought that our long winter and cold spring had truly wiped them out.

The very first blooms up this year are from Eastern Columbine.  Lovely foliage, unique flowers, and the first red bloom I've seen in Operation Pollinator.

The bergamot continues to look great.  I think this could be this hardy plant's big year!

A few other plants that I don't remember from last year, but which don't look particularly weedy to me:

If anyone has any guesses on these plants, I'd appreciate the ID help!

Weeds in the Operation Pollinator Plots

A few weeks of warm weather have sped up the development of the OP plots.  I'm hoping to have at least a few blooming species within the next month, but for now the only things blooming out there are weeds.

You've probably seen the purple field invasion in the last few weeks.  These pictures aren't from my plots, but from a nearby fallow field.  Here's the purple painted culprit:

Purple deadnettle.  Sounds like a good name for a metal band.  According to the internet, you can eat this stuff!

Another likely suspect for the purple fields is henbit.  This weed can be a major problem in turf systems:

I've also seen quite a few violets in my plots.  This weed is very persistent, so I hope my plants start to crowd it out soon:

Finally, there are a handful of what I think is field pennycress.  Can anyone give me a positive ID on this plant?

And then there are these beasts.  These jerks really were in my plots.  You can see the bergamot foliage in the background.

Interestingly, there are many, many more dandelions in my control plots than in the other three wildflower mixes.

A good sign?  Another good sign is that the bergamot is coming on really nicely, even in sites that were struggling last year, like this one:

Can't wait until we start to see blooms!

Springtime for Operation Pollinator

We've had a very long winter here in Kentucky.  It's been chilly and wet all year, but we're finally starting to get some warm springtime weather!

This time last week, we had two straight days of snow.  Later this week we're supposed to have several days above 60F. I'm not going to question it.

The springtime weather drove me out to my Operation Pollinator plots to see how things were progressing.  It was wishful thinking on my part, but I hope to see some more recognizable wildflowers coming up in the next few weeks.

Currently, Operation Pollinator is looking pretty bedraggled and grassy.  There were only two plants that I thought might be early wildflowers coming up.

Does anyone know what this is?  Might be early bergamot coming up.  It looks mint-y to me.

This stuff was also coming up.  Lance-leaf coreopsis?  Might also be plantain or sorrel.

I've got my hopes up for more wildflowers showing up soon.  Can't wait to share all my new Operation Pollinator adventures!

Operation Pollinator rises from the dust!

Oh man has it been a rough month.  Many outside working hours.  Few blooming things.  As a result, also few updates.

Lo siento.

We're back in action now!  Slightly (oh so very, very slightly) lowered temperatures and some timid rainfalls have brought Operation Pollinator back to life.

WHO WANTS TO SEE SOME WILDFLOWERS?!

The annual sunflowers are really starting to dominate their plots, and they seem particularly attractive to larger pollinators like bumblebees.

The bergamot is also slowly coming back to life.  There's a ton of this stuff, foliage-wise, but few blooms right now.  I'm hoping for more recovery between now and September.

The New England aster is also on the rise.  I'm super impressed by this little plant.  It's been hanging in there since June despite record high temperatures, drought, and out-shading.

In newer faces:

My purple coneflowers are finally starting to come in!  This wildflower is a very popular planting around local houses.  If you have some of this plant around your home, good for you!  It's a great native plant that supports both pollinators and finches.

And there's plenty more of it coming on!  The immature blooms look dorky.

The lavender hyssop is coming in beautifully.

Bees love this stuff.  And so do I.

We also have some grade-A hoary vervain (a type of verbena) coming in--though I've only seen one of these blooming.

And finally there is one lonely purpletop verbena in the middle of my butterfly mix.  

The rest of this week is going into putting out more bee bowls to monitor pollinator populations, taking aerial photographs to evaluate floral density, and catching some extra bees for a collaborator who is investigating the endosymbiont communities associated with native bees (correct me if I'm wrong, Abi!).

Cats are bees too

This is my life right now.

Frustration with grant juggling, dying wildflowers, and writing methodologies that I barely understand abounds.

Crunchy

It is seriously hot outside.  The combination of super-mega-volcano hotness, the lack of significant precipitation, and the crazy strong windstorms called derechos have really given the OP plots a hard time.  

An update on the example used in the last post:

Bergamot* two weeks ago:

Bergamot last week:

Bergamot yesterday:

It's rough out there.

Some of my Black-eyed Susans are looking similarly crunchy.

Before heatwave:

After heatwave:

It's just not a great time to be a wildflower.

*Vick, Albert F.W., Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Scorcher

Folks, bad times are coming for the OP plots.

We all know it's been dry.  High temperatures and low rainfall for the last 2-3 weeks have been rough on the wildflowers, and it's only going to get worse.  The wildflowers that had already peaked or were in full swing a few weeks ago are getting pretty crunchy at this point, and those species that should be taking the crunchy flowers place are not coming in very strongly.

For example, bergamot has been pushing its way up for the last month, and has been preparing to bloom for the last week... but bloom it has not.  The few flowers it did put out are looking a little ragged.

What the early bergamot blooms* from two week ago looked like:

And here is what it looks like now.  Kinda rough, for still being in the early stages of bloom.  And there are not a lot of these guys.

I really, really hope it rains soon.  Unfortunately, the current forecast looks a little like this:

So I'm steeling myself for rough times ahead for the ol' OP plots.

We do have a few species that are doing exceptionally well, considering the heat.  Rudbeckia, or Black-Eyed Susan, is definitely still chugging along.

We have a handful of Rudbeckia that are expressing a really odd morphotype.  My personal hypothesis is that this single bloom is just a a weirdo that tripled or quadrupled its expression.  Not the prettiest.  I thought it was a caterpillar fat-ass at first.  It still appears to have a lot of pollen available.  I wonder if pollinators don't recognize it as a flower?

If it ever rains, there will be more flower pictures.  For now, it will mostly be raggedy looking sunflowers and rudbeckia.  C'est la vie.

*Vick, Albert F.W., Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center