The muskeg project continues to move forward. Monday I finished cleaning, and dividing roots for DNA extraction, culturing and staining. Today I started cultures from surface sterilized roots of Carex livida, Trichophorum, Cornus suecica collected from swales and hummocks. The Coptis seems to have ended up in the stain (it is difficult to keep track of the students!). I only set up one plate of each species on MMN and cornmeal this time. The 19 plates I set up on Friday are ready to transfer colonies and I am wary of starting more than I can keep up with (okay, I already have). The photo is of a stained root of Carex livida. It shows dark septate hyphae, a large possible ascomycete hypha (on the left) and several vesicles from potential AMF fungi. I'm hoping to successfully culture the former two fungi and pick up the latter in the wheat plants.
Marisa did puzzle out what was wrong with the PCR process that we did last week. Not recipe reading error or mis-programming the thermocycler, but the lack of a certain protein BSA that seems to help amplification of fussy pieces of DNA. The solution Q (a proprietary mystery substance) didn't seem to do the trick with this particular process. We'll start the amplification process again on Wednesday.
Monday was a good day for money. The bit of recovered (via Jan) CREESES (sp?) money came through and the SCS board approved our grant request. Now we can obtain the extra primers and other supplies that will potentially make this project much more successful.
I had a bit of a wild ride home after the SCS meeting. Nice short chop, lots of white caps, but was completely entertained by the amazing flights of the petrels swooping around the bow. They seem to be attracted by the lights and like to play ( I assume) in the bow wake. They appear out of the darkness as a bright white bird at the forward quarter of the skiff, then disappear under the bow. Not really sure how many I saw last night, but they accompanied me across to Morne Island again.
The next morning, no sign of the birds, but it was a calm morning. They chased me home again tonight after class.
Spent a little time (one hour) at the USFS herbarium trying to puzzle out a few taxonomic questions. I looked through the Erigeron collection to look at the differences between E. humilis and E. peregrinus. The most consistent character beside the degree of hairiness and general look of the plant is the quite beautiful dark purple cross walls in the hairs. They were clearly visible with a hand lens, not to my unaided eye. On larger plants the hairs had a lavender cast to them that wasn't visible in smaller plants. The size of the plants was extremely variable as was the degree of hairiness (although all were pretty hairy). There were collections from Yakutat, Skagway, Bear Mtn, and Chichagof Island at Iyouktug crk and Seal Crk Mtn(Freshwater Bay). The later was a JD collection. Found another Erigeron species that allegedly occurs in southeast, E. glacialis var. glacialis. It keys out right next to peregrinus in group 12 of the FNA and I haven't had the time to try to puzzle that particular tangle. E. humilis feels a bit more certain.
Briefly looked at the Antennarias and Saxifrages. No help there. The Antennarias in the collection are mostly species rosea, the others didn't look that distinctive, but I didn't put too much time into it. Sorting that group out will take a dissecting scope and a little more time. At least, A. monocephala and pink bracted versions of A. rosea seem to be easy ones to recognize.
The other vaguely productive task I did begin to accomplish was looking through the Triantha folder. All were labeled T. glutinosa, but I could seperate the plants in two stacks based on prescence of hairs with the punctate glands. Only one of the plants had a more globose inflorescence (why are there so many words with c's and s's?). I was hoping that there would be a drawing of the three species that are reported for southeast in the book version of the FNA, but no luck.
It was a little frustrating that there weren't any specimens of Saxifraga lyallii in the herbarium. There was a specimen of a saxifrage that I hadn't seen before, S. cernua from Bear mtn. Bear Mtn just keeps coming up...
I don't think that Bear mtn is especially unique, just a more accessible higer alpine. I would really like to spend some time on some of the Baranof island peaks. Maybe I should put my Backdoor money in a jar and save it for a helicopter charter. Not sure that I could live without Bernadettes's cookies.
Spent a good part of the afternoon walking through Totem Park and driving out to Starrigavan looking for birds and mushrooms. Decided to deviate from my recent habits and venture to the west side of Totem park. Was rewarded with some interesting mushrooms. Collected a green Russula, a few Lactarius and a couple of Tricholomas (one of which I know I collected last year and abandoned). There were still ample Russula bicolor, Lactarius rufus, Hydnum repandum and a few small Chanterelles. There were abundant fruitings of Amanita muscaria var. flavivolvata and formosa or guessowii. My indecisiveness about the variety is because of variation in the way the subspecies are dealt with in different treatments. There were some mushrooms that were bright yellow and others that were bright orange. I'm not convinced that the two color forms I found were different subspecies. I'd like to look a bit more carefully at them. Once again, the mushroom expert has a good discussion and links to Dr. Tulloss's site on Amanitas which looks pretty interesting. http://www.mushroomexpert.com/amanita_muscaria.html
the direct link is to Tulloss's site is http://pluto.njcc.com/~ret/amanita/species/muscgues.html
Maybe tomorrow I'll collect one of each color and see what other differences I can find. Did see the golden-eyes at the river mouth. I keep forgetting to note that there has been a group of about 20 goldeneyes by the Wades dock every morning since this weekend.
Finally saw a Hooded Merganser this fall out at Starrigavan. Not much else jumped out at me out there, but I was starting to feel guilty for avoiding work and didn't stay long.
Fortunately, I finished grading rather quickly and was able to go guilt free to Swan Lake before drawing. Found the cackling goose, the green winged teals, the ring necked ducks and the coot, so could go contentedly indoors again.
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