Hop hop hop

I took the last Stipa collections of the season today (pulled off 6 ticks). The seed is mostly falling off or has already dropped, so that's pretty much it. I don't have the numbers compiled yet, but we didn't hit our goal. We did manage to make quite a good collection from across our study area (most of our county's roads and prairie remnants).

The team then worked on finding Stipa seedlings in the common garden. Yes, we were looking for grass seedlings in heavy grass (luckily Stipa is fairly distinct and we more or less know where they are, but most have died).

Here's a grasshopper chilling out on top of an Echinacea. Make sure to check out yesterday's awesome Wasp Mantidfly.