Diario de david_reddig

This week was super busy with midterms, so for this nature walk, I just took a walk around the Pine Tree Reserve and the Reservoir. It was a beautiful sunny day out today and the weather was perfect for a walk. The leaves on the trees were changing, and the temperature was around 50-60 degrees. Even though I did not go far from campus this week, I was still able to observe all four main groups of plants on my nature walk. I think it is super cool that we have such a large population of Pine Trees around campus because I love their green color that stays throughout the year. I also was able to observe a Porcelain Berry which I learned is not native to MA and was actually brought to MA by humans. When looking at the Fern I found, I thought about class and remembered there may be spores on the underside of its leaves, but when I checked, there were none. Also, it was hard to find a lot of flowering plants on my walk because it was getting colder, but I was able to find some with berries on them! These angiosperm plants were oftentimes pretty far apart which made me think about how impressive it is that these flowering pants are able to successfully reproduce even over a somewhat large area.

This week, I went back to Houghton Garden because I liked it so much last week, so I wanted to check it out again. It was a very rainy and overcast today, but that is my favorite kind of weather which made me happy. It was around 60 degrees F out, so it was a bit chilly but not too cold. My nature walk this week was really nice because a lot of the leaves had started to change color in the Garden which was beautiful. I was able to observe four different fungi on my nature walk this week. Two of which were growing on dead tree branches, one of which was a mushroom, and one of which was Orange Jelly on a mossy rock. It was really cool to observe the fungi close up and to be on the lookout for it in general. When trying to identify the species in my pictures today, I was struggling to differentiate different species based off looks which made me think about morphological speciation from class and also about the importance of knowing biological and phylogenic information to confidently identifying a species. Since fungi are eukaryotes, I was also thinking about the similarities and differences between bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes during my nature walk which made me think about the biochemical processes going on within the eukaryotic fungi cells.

I took my walk in Houghton Garden with my friend Paige who is also in Eco/Evo. It was a very nice day out, sunny, but a little bit chilly. I saw lots of plants and the entire garden area was very green. There was also a small pond and small stream in the garden which was very nice. I saw a lot of squirrels and a couple chipmunks too. There were a few very cool flowers that added some color to the nature walk, and I also saw some mushrooms and some berries. There was also a cool rock formation/bench on one path in the garden that was nice to sit on. Overall, I had a really good time and would like to go back to Houghton Garden.