Last week was my first week back at work after getting married to my sweetheart. The wedding was a blast, and if you want to see a video of our surprise first dance choreography, search “Gretchen and Derek’s First Dance Surprise” on Youtube.
The plants grew a lot while I was gone, and it is hotter than heck here with heat indices above 100 F. I have been working on various projects, including the beginnings of seed collection for the brown eyed susan (Rudbeckia grandiflora) and the pale purple coneflower (Echinacea pallida)! Luckily we happened to be around the seed orchard when other FS folks started mowing… we flagged around areas we wanted to save to collect seed from, and a subsequent visit confirmed that they had done a good job of respecting the flagging.
Echinacea pallida aka pale purple coneflower at the USFS seed orchard
Susan, Terry and I drove out to the Poteau district’s pine-bluestem restoration area. They told me about how logging can be part of the restoration if done properly and combined with controlled burns and other management strategies. I saw red cockaded woodpecker trees, some with inserts to help the birds have fast accommodations, but didn’t see any birds that day. We scouted out a good place for me to collect more R. grandiflora seeds and checked on red ringed milkweed along the road that they have been monitoring. Most milkweed plants only produce one pod if any, but we saw one individual with SIX PODS! Susan wants to collect milkweed seed, so this is great.
Asclepias variagata aka red ringed milkweed along the road in the Poteau district.
Another thing I did last week was check on the milkweed plantings in the seed orchard. Many of them were not doing very well. They were covered in milkweed bugs (Oncopeltus fasciatus). Susan made a spray with vegetable oil and Dawn dish soap in water. I sprayed many of them but couldn’t get to them all on that day. This morning I did a little research though, and it seems that milkweed bugs don’t tend to really harm milkweed. The problem might be something else like aphids, drought or fungus.
Planted milkweed not doing well, with milkweed bugs and aphids?
Tomorrow we are going to help out with vegetation monitoring with the Nature Conservancy. Something new! Signing off for now. Take care y’all!
Gretchen