Neighborhood Walk, Friday Oct. 9 2020
Some of my students have expressed concern that they cannot complete assigned nature walks because they are not near any "natural" areas. While I generally believe "the wilder the better" when it comes to observing nature, I also think it is important to realize that nature, and even wildness is all around us. So, this morning I walked around the neighborhood that my campus sort of spills into, and tried to do the nature walk that I assign my students (this week's theme was fungi). It was a cold, bright morning. I think it got almost to freezing last night! So, there weren't many insects out and about, and in this fairly dry area, I didn't see many large fungi. However, this neighborhood has lots of old stone walls and trees that are COVERED with lichens. So, I tried to find as many types of lichen as I could, since lichens are a symbiosis that include a fungal partner. I also wanted to show that by looking for "weeds" you can see a lot of different plant diversity. I enjoyed finding a few different types of lovely flowers among the plants growing (wildly) through cracks in the sidewalk, in overlooked patches of earth, and right out of the stone walls. In addition to the flowering plants, I found lots of moss, especially on the well-shaded stone walls and tree trunks. I love seeing how mosses and lichens grow together (not to mention all the overlapping types of lichen). It makes me wonder about the interactions they might have. Are they competing for growing space? Might they be cooperatively sharing resources somehow? This is something I should look into. Next week's assigned nature walk theme is plants, so this walk provided plenty of examples of local plant diversity as well. Not a bad start to this Friday!
