sarahkc's Journal

This week, I went to the Chestnut Hill Reservoir for my nature walk. It was a beautiful clear and cool morning after all of the rain that came through Boston yesterday. I went in with the intention of trying to notice and find new plants that I typically do not pay attention to on my regular walks. Finding moss was fairly easy. It was bright green and on top of a rock that was still damp. I was also super excited to see the Ginkgo tree with its iconic yellow coloration in the fall. I really enjoyed seeing all of the plants, but it is definitely much more difficult to name the plants than the animals that we find. There are usually multiple options that look similar to the plant that I found, and in that case, I choose the more general taxonomic level. In addition to the plants that I observed this week, I noticed that all of the animals I observed had some interaction with the plants nearby as I was watching (the squirrel hiding by the tree and eating an acorn, the mallards using the plant to hide, and the canada goose walking through the grass to find some food. This week's nature walk showed me how easy it is to take the beauty of plants for granted and how important their role is with the rest of the environment.

For this week's nature walk, I decided to go to the Chestnut Hill Reservoir to try to find some fungi. I started this walk along the water and saw some animals and plants, but no fungi, so they I decided to take one of the dirt paths off the primary path at the reservoir into the wooded area. In here, almost every tree had lichen, which is a type of fungi, on its bark. Then the more I looked around, the more fungi I saw. I initially found identifying the fungi much more difficult than identifying plants and animals because I am less familiar with anything that does not look like a stereotypical mushroom. I first looked on the forest floor for mushrooms and other types of fungi, but could not find any. I went on my walk before any rain had come through Boston, so that may be a reason as to why (because the forest floor was very dry). When I started looking at the plants and trees, the fungi were much more obvious and the more I looked the more I found. This also touches on the information we learned this week that about 80% of plants have a relationship with fungi, so seeing the fungi growing on or right next to large plants makes sense!

Today I went on my first nature walk. I decided to walk around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir this afternoon. It was sunny and warm despite the rain and wind that came through Boston this morning. My first initial observations were fairly obvious to me, like the geese, swans, and ducks in the water, but as time went on, I began to notice more. I noticed the Small Copper, or Lycaena phlaes, only when I was about to stop and take an observation of the flowers it was sitting on. This ties into this weeks theme of Archaea, Bacteria, and viruses because these microbial organisms are not noticed, and sometimes go without recognition, just because they are not obvious to us, the observer, but they play an integral role in biology and in the world around us. Even though I could not see the bacteria, archaea, and viruses today on my nature walk, knowing they are there around us on the plants and animals we can see, and literally on and in us, gives a different perspective about their role in our day to day lives.