samanthawajda's Journal

It was very overcast and rainy for my walk and was colder than it has been usually. This made the walk not as enjoyable due to the light rain that persisted. I went to the trails along the Chestnut Hill reservoir and was looking primarily for mushrooms in trees of on the ground as my types of fungi. Honestly, while I am sure there are an endless amount of fungi species all around me, I found these fungi hard to find. There were numerous plants and animals but fungi was not as apparent as I had expected. I also realized how particularly difficult it is to distinguish fungi. I saw a lot of moss on trees and at first thought this may be fungi before realizing it is just a plant. I was unsure if a lot of the spots I observed on different trees were also plants, like moss, or if they were in fact fungi. This is where more knowledge about the characteristics of fungi that we will learn in class will help me to better identify what is and what isn't fungi. Overall, I thought this walk was very interesting because I have never gone in a walk with the intent of looking for specifically fungi. For me, it seemed that, ironically, because I was looking, it was even harder to find.

It was very cloudy and was raining lightly my entire walk. I found this nature walk to be much easier than the fungi walk. When looking for fungi, I had a lot of difficulty finding it in my walk. But, in contrast, when looking for the different types of plants, I found them all almost immediately without looking very hard. This assignment showed me that there is a lot more diversity in the plant phylum than we often remember and it also reminded me how prevalent these different species are all around us at all times. It can be so easy to forget all of the millions of species that surround us on a daily basis. I often forget with plants too how much diversity there actually is. Often when I think of plants I think of flowers but i was reminded on this walk that all of the moss that lines a lot of the trees and ground are all plants too! It's easy to forget all of the diversity and uniques characteristics and differences that exist between species when you aren't looking for them.