Diario de maeganblansett

Bay Area Plants

I opted for the first prompt, identifying some common Alameda County species.

This exercise was a fun opportunity to put the new skills I have been learning into practice. I honestly hadn't realized how much more in tune with plant identification I had been slowly becoming until I was asked to put it to use. I started this class with virtually no plant bio/botany experience whatsoever, so it felt like a bit of a struggle at first, but I have been gradually getting acclimated as we've moved along in the course. Today, as I ventured out in search of some observations, I found it unexpectedly easy to find five of the 30 species on the list.

The species I identified were:

1. the common dandelion - a lifelong classic
2. the California poppy - this is a plant I see ALL around, but had never considered until this class! It's fun to have some natural history to tie to the landscape I see daily.
3. the Milk Thistle - a very interesting and intimidating spiky little plant
4. Coyote brush - I remember seeing this way back in my childhood in Idaho and just learned its name today.
5. Pacific poison oak - all I have to say about this one is 'ugh.'

Furthermore, I realized I had been seeing them around even before this, and also even in regions other than this! For example, I'm currently taking a field methods class in geography that has been requiring weekend field trips of us. Two weeks ago, I was in Morro Bay and saw a lot of milk thistle and took its photo because I thought it was interesting. Today I found it just blocks outside my door! Last weekend, I was near Walker Ridge and saw lots of coyote brush (I think it was even hanging around in some of our serpentine soil plots- very hardy) and much more poison oak than I am interested in ever seeing again.

Overall, this class has been a great way to get us more familiar with interacting with nature. I've been learning more than I realized!

This week's journal is all about plants. After learning a little bit of that basics, I happily journeyed into Tilden Park again, one of my favorite places, in search of some specimens. As someone who was completely new to botany or any form of plant identification prior to this class, it was quite an adventure to say the least!

Here is what I found:

One monocot, with bright yellow 6-petaled flowers and slender, parallel-veined green leaves

One dicot, with cute 5-petaled purple flowers and clusters of green leaves

One plant consisting mainly of clover leaves, with petite regular purple flowers perfectly displaying their radial symmetry intermixed

One plant with CRAZY purple flowers that were definitely irregular and in no way exhibiting radial symmetry.

One plant belonging to the pea family, with bright purple flowers arranged in a peculiar cone shape.

One plant that was a coniferous tree, of the gymnosperm variety of course

One plant with lovely, well-defined pinnate leaves extending off long slender stalks to form a small bush along a creek

One plant with perfectly aligned opposite leaves, and finally...

One plant belonging to the sunflower family, even though its tiny pink leaves could lead you to believe otherwise!

Please see the attached observations for photos of all my discoveries. I'm really excited for the resident pros of inaturalist to come along and inform me of what all these plants' true identities are!

The theme of my observations this week is pretty straightforward: I like flowers.

Our campus, along with most of California and probably this region of the world, is largely covered with weedy little plants growing in every available space. I had seldom even noticed them, until last week when my field methods class was practicing vegetation sampling. The professor selected a small patch right outside McCone (across the pathway from an area where our class once overturned a log and identified all kind of stuff underneath) and plopped down a quadrat tool. We then proceeded to count all the different species growing inside it, and I was amazed at the diversity of life contained in what I had previously just disregarded as annoying weeds!

Ever since, I've been making an effort to keep more of an eye out for differences and peculiarities in the natural vegetation everywhere I go, and one thing has become evident. These areas of weeds are now all beginning to blossom, revealing their true form and beauty! After our mini-plant lab on Tuesday, I was excited to take a stroll and appreciate the subtleties of a few of our local specimens, and these are my five favorite.

It might be worth mentioning that I also noticed an increase in birds being out and about, but failed repeatedly at photographing them, so I opted for the flower theme instead. I'm also curious as to why the common ivy I so love (I've already observed it several times for the class) appears to be dying while everything else is happy, healthy and blooming.

This week, my observations were a little more pressed for time than usual because of a lot of other things I had going on, but I was still able to find a few interactions.

The first thing I noticed was relatively easy to spot: I kneeled down to look at some Ivy (which I identified first and have continued to see all over Berkeley) and noticed a variety of insects right away. For example, I observed a little rollie pollie bug here on inat, but I also saw a spider who had made its web amongst the ivy leaves and a variety of tiny gnats buzzing around the whole time. Some of the ivy leaves were very damaged, and I was wondering if this was a result of all the bugs taking advantage of it or if its cause was something entirely unrelated (perhaps a fungus or plant disease).

My next interaction also involved some ivy, but this time, the ivy was doing the using rather than the being used. In this case, I found a tree that had ivy twining all over its trunk and even overtaking many of its branches to the point where it looked as if it could have been all one tree (if we didn't already know the ivy was its own plant). I was fascinated by the extent to which these two plants are able to coexist and wanted to snap a photo.

Lastly, I observed a butterfly pollinating some morning glory flowers. I'm really excited about this butterfly because I think there is a chance it came from the caterpillar I observed a few weeks ago, since I found it in the exact same place! The rich purple flowers initially caught my eye, and then I noticed they had also caught the attention of this butterfly!

Homework #3

For this assignment, I headed into Tilden Park and ambled down a trail that passed along a broad expanse of chaparral vegetation as well as directly through a moist evergreen forest. What I discovered in looking for observations was very interesting!

In the chaparral portion of the hike, anything green was much harder to come by. I ended up identifying a weed, a shrub, a flower, what I think was some fungus attached to a tree, and another particularly intriguing plant. Obviously, the first thing I noticed when reflecting on these observations was that there were no animals. Although I did see a few birds and some very skittish lizards, for the most part, there was nothing alive and mobile to be seen. I think this is most likely because I went out in the middle of the day, when the sun was fully out, so anything that might normally be roaming free in the very exposed region was seeking shelter in the shade. As far as adaptations of the things I did see, the most common trait was that they were all noticeably dry, but not dying. The shrub had very small leaves, as you mentioned, as well as the flower. The other two plants I observed, however, actually had very broad leaves, and one of them even had some fuzzy "hairs" growing on its leaves. Perhaps these large leaves are useful for storing water, or maybe they simply absorb as much sunlight as possible to contribute to their food production that way. The flaky green thing growing on some tree branches that I have listed as fungus was also extremely dry but seemed to still be thriving that way, which was very interesting to me, because usually stuff like that likes a very damp, dark environment. I'm really not sure what it is so I hope someone is able to identify it for me!

In the moist evergreen portion of the hike, on the other hand, it felt like life was all around me. (Or, more accurately, under every log!) I observed two types of insect, a mollusk, another fungus and a plant here as well. I thought it was interesting that although this area was heavily shaded (from the tall, leafy trees), everything still seemed to be hiding! In fact, this was the most interesting characteristic of the things I observed in this region. In the chaparral, even when I overturned logs and went prodding around, it was still completely dry underneath and there was nothing to be found. However, here in the moist forest, water seemed to be retained everywhere, and all the critters loved it. Even the creatures themselves seemed to be adapted to hold onto this water. Another thing I noticed was that everything here seemed more protected: the snail had a shell, the rollie pollies and beetles both had hard exo-skeletons, etc. I think this could be because, since there is more water around and more organisms can live here, in order to survive, they need more protection in order to remain competitive.

Overall, the two environments were very different, even though they were extremely close together. I definitely noticed how the organisms in each sector had adapted to carve our their unique niche in the beautiful park!

For the flowering portion of this exercise, plants were fairly easy to find. During my walk earlier today, I saw a beautiful plant that was clearly fully flowering.

For the dormant portion, I used a different plant. My friend's house is naturally covered in Morning Glory flowers, which create a scatter of rich purple flowers amongst the bright green leaves and attract life such as butterflies as well. However, since it is currently winter, the flowers are currently MIA. [note: I'm not sure why my picture still says "processing" after so long, but it's just a picture of the plain green leaves without the flowers.]

For the leaf portion, I found one tree (currently yet to be identified) which was in a unique position - some of its branches are completely bare, while the branches higher up on the tree are covered in leaves. I am unsure what could be causing this trend but it is very interesting!

Today after class, I went off in search of five new taxa to identify. (I realized that the ones I had been planning to identify before probably weren't naturalized, but it was relatively simple finding five more!)

The first "iconic taxa" I came across was a little whitish bug that came crawling out when we overturned a log. We identified this as land-dwelling crustacean, or more specifically, an isopod. (I'm not sure if he counts towards this exercise since we found him in class, but I thought he was really neat so I wanted to include him in my observations.)

The next thing I found was some sort of mold growing on the underside of a log. It was whitish in color. I actually found it under several logs before eventually deciding it was worthy of an observation. I placed it on the tree in the kingdom Fungi, but I hope someone more knowledgeable will be able to ID it more precisely.

Another "iconic taxa" I came across was the class Insecta. I found a tiny little bug in the leaves which I believe was a cricket, and I later found some water striders gliding along the surface of strawberry creek.

I also found a couple of different types of flowers, in the phylum Magnopliophyta, or flowering plants. One of these was on campus along the creek, and another I had seen a few days previously near Tilden park. Both were beautiful and currently flowering!

Another "iconic taxa" I found hiding under a log was a member of the phylum Mollusca. Under one overturned log relatively close to the creek, there was a little greyish slug clinging to the bottom. He wasn't moving whatsoever and didn't seem to appreciate having his house turned upside down so I quickly replaced him.

The last group I will reference is the most obvious, the animals. Within Kingdom Animalia & Phylum Chordata, I very easily found a Fox Squirrel - a mammal of the order Rodenta - as many people in class have been doing. They are extremely prevalent on campus and not shy! Similarly, I found several American Crows, which were so numerous and boisterous they were basically begging to be included in my observations. They are also found in Kingdom Animalia and Phylum Chordata, but are members of the class Aves.