Diario de andyguzman

Today I walked the around the Houghton Garden again. The weather has gotten very warm recently, which I did not expect for this time of year, but it was nice. The theme for today's walk was plants. I first encountered moss on the rocks along the river which makes sense since they live in damp areas. I also know moss are bryophytes meaning that they have gametophyte dominant life cycles. Another interesting find were the Pokeweeds. Pokeweeds actually have visible berries, which makes them angiosperms since they produce seeds enclosed within a fruit. My guess is that these seeds are dispersed by the birds that eat these berries.

I explored Houghton Garden today for the first time. It was a very peaceful walk, especially because I was moving very slowly as I looked around for fungi. I noticed that all the fungi I found were growing at the bases of the trees. My hypothesis for this observation is that fungi are able to receive nutrients from the trees since fungi have the ability to degrade lignin. One of the fungi even had tons of little worm-looking organisms living under it which I found very interesting. It's possible that they lived in the same spot since both fungi and worms are decomposers. Overall, I had a good time during this walk.

I walked around the res. for about an hour. It was chilly and cloudy out today, with the sun only shining through for a few moments. During my walk, I was really focused on finding smaller species on the outer edges of the trail. I noticed that there is high evenness of species around the reservoir. There was not really any one species that dominated the entire area--the species were pretty spread out overall. I would also note that these plants are all still alive even during the colder temperatures in the fall. They have adapted to be able to survive in colder weather like this. I also came across two swans during my walk.