Diario de car0line_ahn

For this nature walk, I decided to start along the road of Beacon street. The weather this morning was quite chilly. It was in the low 40s. I tried to locate a lot of the plants in one area and managed to do so. When I first walked on Beacon St, I noticed a lot of Bryophyta (moss) on the streets in this surrounding neighborhood. What I found most interesting was the location in which the mosses were growing. I remember learning how there are possible symbiotic relationships. A lot of the plants that I identified were all in the Houghton Garden. For example, the Polypodiopsida (fern) was located almost everywhere I walked. The Chinese hemlock was something I noticed was a common type of pine tree in this area. Not only did I see it on my walk to the garden, but I have seen it on Newton Campus before too. The tree itself has pine branches that are quite petite. The Angiosperms (flowering plants) are really some of the most diverse and common types of plant species. What is so interesting about the Angiosperms is their role in the environment, specifically in regard to our carbon and oxygen reciprocating relationship that is essential to all life.

For my nature walk, I traveled to the Houghton Garden. It was a very scenic route and very woodsy. The weather was somewhat cold with light sprinkles of rain. Along the walk, I noticed various fungi that we either growing from from the ground or on trees. All the fungi I observed looked like different species. I found this striking and questionable. The one thing that made me wonder about the fungi was their relationship to spores pertaining to molecular and metabolic characteristics which we learned in lecture. Spores essentially have the ability to take a cell and shut it down when necessary. I am curious to know if fungi undergo both sexual and asexual reproduction from horizontal gene transfer, which may explain the various fungi that I observed in the garden today because bacteria and eukarya are very similar. Horizontal gene transfer promotes both genetic and microbial diversity which can possibly explain why the the fungi have different characteristics of color, size, and the location of their growth.

This afternoon, I went on a walk around the the Pine Tree Preserve and eventually walked around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir for the first time since I have arrived on campus. It was a very gloomy and slightly chilly day. The Pine Tree preserve was the most interesting path I've ever taken. Surprisingly, I saw a few Eastern Gray Squirrels sprinting across the green. I saw a few shrubs growing nearby the tree stomps. By the time I got to the reservoir, it was surrounded by trees that were slightly changing their color due to the cold weather we have had recently. Personally, I think the temperature near the water was colder compared to the temperature on the way walking to the reservoir. I did not see many geese as I usually do. In addition, I saw a few shrubs growing on the tree trunks as I was circling the reservoir.