I went on a quick walk this evening. I guess I needed a bit of alone time, after an overwhelming but nevertheless fun day of being at home and doing much less than I had hoped. I decided to use this time to inspect my tansy field site. We’re in a bit of a heat wave at the moment, and although it has been relatively wet, the question is usually how wet is wet enough. (Drought is more of a problem than heat, it’s just that the two often go together) Especially as I hadn’t seen the field in two weeks, it was also to get me some peace of mind.
The plants looked alright, although they’re a bit ahead of the wild plants I have seen around. Flower heads were senescing, which means I’ll have to cut them, to prevent seeds with different chemotypes destroying the integrity of the experimental design. I now decided to cancel the sampling event that my colleagues were planning. It makes little sense to sample senescing and flowerless plants. So, pruning, I guess that’ll be my morning task tomorrow morning. It seems that growing plants in the greenhouse and planting them late, results in slight shifts in phenology. This of course makes total sense, and is not a huge problem. They’re perennial plants, so they’ll be back next year, and we’ll be back to sample then, as was the initial idea anyway.
So my self time turns into more work. That was not the plan! Oops.
Robin Heinen 