agerlach's Journal

For the extra credit, I decided to do assignment No. 2 for Homework 8 this week. I found seven (7) observations at and around the sight of my moist evergreen forest assignment (homework 3) and my chaparral hike to see how things have changed.

There was a lot of change near the moist evergreen. my favorite part was this plant, like a coniferous plant, that had these new lighter green tips on each of the leaves. I thought that was really cool, and maybe an example of spring regrowth or something.
However, the big trees like the pines and redwoods didn't really seem different, i guess because they're deciduous so therefore have leaves year-round.

Similarly, the chaparral seemed very much the same as well. At least, more the brush plants. There were a few plants (like this one with red leaves/flowers) that obviously showed signs of spring regrowth.

finally, i walked around campus a bit just to snap pictures of plants that were clearly in the midst of spring flowering. just to see a difference between the mostly barren campus of winter and this new one in spring.

For homework 8, i chose to do the first activity in which i found five things listed on that "30 species" list. So, first i found an example of sudden oak death on an oak tree on campus. Then i found moss. Then a california incense cedar. Then some turkey-tail. Then a coast live oak

Spring in Berkeley is the absolute best time of the year (well, summer in Berkeley is pretty great too, but I digress).

Anyway, I love Berkeley springs because the air is still crisp but you can swelter just a little bit if you lay out in the sun (as I myself am wont to do in my special alcove on Northside). I also loathe wearing close-toed shoes, so that's an added bonus.

Anyway, spring observations are as follows: daisies cropping up outside the Fall Extension campus on my walk home every morning. There's that saying, "pushing daisies," but I'm about 99 percent sure there are no bodies buried there (haha).

Homework 4, which calls for three observations of species interacting with other species.

The first observation is of a child and his dog. Easy enough, a species (dog) that has been domesticated so much by another species (human) as to be totally dependent upon the human for food and shelter and entertainment and love.

The second observation is of a manzantia tree growing in such as way as to rest upon the coast live oak tree. It's an example of commensalism.

The third observation is of two squirrels exploring around and on the tree for food. These squirrels rely on the tree for food (like nuts) as well as shelter.

(Homework 4, Fed. 28)

Here is part two of Homework 3, in which we found five observations of Moist Evergreen Forest plant and animal life.

For the moist evergreen part, I went to the part of campus between Gianini Hall and Haviland Hall, where there are a lot of redwoods and a branch of the Strawberry Creek sort of meanders past. So, I took a picture of a redwood (does this classify as moist evergreen, or a different type of environment? wasn't sure). And then I found a lot of plants with wide leaves and deep colors. They looked a lot healthier (obviously looks can be deceiving) than the chaparral plants, I guess because the air is more moist. There were ferns and ivy. And some cool fungi-moss type stuff on the ground. It's weird because I walk past that stuff nearly every day and never thought twice about it, but by the end of the exercise, every plant I saw I was sort of classifying it. Like, whether it would be chaparral or redwood or maybe something totally different.

This assignment was really tough, because it was hard to find some of the plant species such as sunflower (I'm not positive if mine is such) and the pea family plant and the irregular flower (such as a potted orchid).

However, my sister and I had fun bonding while searching for plants. It was a challenge, but as a college student I welcome challenges. This made me much more aware of not only my surroundings on campus (as, quite frankly, every homework has) but it also made me realize the vast variety of plant life that I've been researching, observing, and posting about all semester. Just when you think you identified something accurately, you find out there's a whole other category to explain.

My favorite part of the assignment was finding the monocot and dicot plants. I remember learning about those in high school biology -- like, the differences between the two. But it was great to finally get out in nature and witness firsthand the difference with my own eyes (or, really, with my iPhone camera).

(This is Homework 4, due March 21. It's an hour late because I was at the Sharks-Kings hockey game all night, but uploaded as soon as I got home. The pictures were taken ahead of time).

So, for this week's exercise, I chose to stay close to campus. So far I've enjoyed doing that for all the assignments, because I want to challenge myself to re-examine everything I walk past every day in terms of the course.

So, for the chaparral part, I went to this one spot on Northside near the Graduate Theological Union that is a really quiet, great place to read. I go there a lot in the spring when I should be studying. Anyway, they have this overgrown pathway nearby that just has a ton of these chaparral-looking plants. I saw a lot of succulents, too, but I figured that those weren't as native. A lot of the trees looked really scrubby and scraggly. I guess that's what happens when there isn't a lot of water. I assume that some of the plants with waxy coating do so in order to conserve water.

Unfortunately, I only have four observations for my Tree of Life Exercise. That's because I originally had a picture of a crow, then accidentally deleted it. So, that would have been a bird.

Regardless, I found the following taxa: plant (some large-leafed plant I can't identify); mammal (fox squirrel, a surprisingly hard find today ...); mollusk (like, what the hell. did not know those existed on campus); and fungi (a lichen).

I needed three observations to complete the phenology exercise. I found a bare tree on campus that had no leaves; a cluster of ivy that also had no leaves or flowers (so just bare); and a flowering plant with leaves (flower).