Diario de p_roy_

I went on a "nature run" in and around Houghton Garden. It was a beautiful day yesterday, and it was a bit chilly when I went for my run. I saw lots of cool plants and bugs while running through the garden, but I only took photos of things that I only saw once or twice (for the most part). I wanted to grab a picture of the chipmunks I saw a few times running through the forest, but they were too quick for me to do so.

I think I was focused on finding things around the forest that I hadn't seen more than once or twice because I was interested in finding the organisms that were the most sparsely populated within the garden community. While I was running and observing, I was thinking about the different measurements of diversity that could be measured within the Houghton Garden. I think that there is a high amount of species within the community, but (and this is especially relevant for the tree species) I think that there is a relatively low level of species evenness.

Today, I went back to Houghton Garden. It was colder than when I went on my "nature run" last week, yet it was much sunnier. When I began my nature walk, I looked for fungi in dark and wet places, as that is the only way I knew how to find them. This walk soon became much more involved than my previous one; when I spotted a particular fungi species, they were usually off the trail. I climbed through the brush of the "woods" many times to get a good shot of an interesting fungi.

As I walked, it was helpful to think about the different ways in which fungi are different from other organisms we've studied. When I wasn't sure whether something I had found on my nature walk was considered to be a species of fungi, I thought about the niche in which I found it. Typically, I found fungi on dead and rotting pieces of wood (or other plants). It made sense to me to classify the organisms I encountered on dead plants as fungi because they play an important role in decomposition within ecosystems.

I wanted to explore a different part of Newton, so I went to the Hammond Pond Reservation off of Hammond Pond Parkway.

During my walk, I found it the most difficult to find flowering plants as I went on a particularly chilly day. Last week, in the cold weather, most of the flowering plants had lost their petals, so it was hard to spot them amongst the rest of the plants on the forest floor. Interestingly enough, my favorite flowering plant that I found was on my walk back to campus along Hammond Pond Parkway (although it was on a main road, it was still wild).

Throughout my walk, I found it easier to spot different species of fungi. Because of the last nature walk that we had done, I was primed to spot fungi in their typical niche: on rot and decay or in dark, wet places. I found myself seeking out interesting fungal species more than looking for ferns or other plant classes.

When I finally focused on taking photos of the large trees that surrounded me in the forest, I took special interest in the shapes that their hard exterior had managed to wind itself into. I wondered how a shared trait--vascularity (if that's even a word)-- between the seedless vascular plants like a fern and the seeded (non-flowering) plants could look so different. The ferns that I saw all had relatively "regular" stems/"trunks" that did not wind into weird shapes.