Lake Travis, Oct. 10 2020
I went to Austin, Texas over the weekend to visit some friends and they took me to Lake Travis to go swimming and boating. The weather that day was very hot and sunny with the temperature being around 90°. The water was warm and there were a lot of trails and places to hike around the lake. I went on one of these trails and saw a lot of plant diversity. Most of my observations consisted of vascular plants and I first spotted a lot of Horseweed growing near the water, which is a vascular plant belonging in the clade of angiosperms. I also found some cacti. For example, the Eastern Prickly Pear is a also an angiosperm belong in the vascular plants. As I continued to walk, I saw a lot of flowers, also classified as angiosperms/vascular plants. I saw the common lantana with its purple flowers, and the Texas Creeping-Oxeye with its yellow flowers. I was looking for some more different plants and I eventually found these Junipers which are seedless vascular plants classified as gymnosperms because they are conifers. I was surprised by this because it looked like these blue fruit balls were growing off of the leaves. My final observation was of the evergreen sumac, another vascular plant that is an angiosperm. Its fruit was red and had these hair-like strands coming out of it. Thankfully, I did not touch the fruit because it is actually poisonous to humans similarly to poison ivy. Overall, I really enjoyed the summer weather as opposed to the colder weather I will experience soon here in Boston.
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