Diario de maeganblansett

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'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!