UW Fungi and Forbs Tour

Union Bay Natural Area

low 60's
partially sunny
partial cloud cover
low wind

Today we learned about types of fungi and forbs available for observation on the UW campus. It is very hard to identify fungi, but we were on our tour able to see a wide variety of different classes and species of fungi in the union bay natural area to the east of campus. It was a mild spring day just after a medium rain shower the day before, so the mushrooms and fungi were in close to ideal conditions for observation, and many juvenile and adult specimens were growing (see the pleated inkcap for an example). I'm not sure if I got the spellings right for these species, so I have added them to ID please so someone could correct my spelling if it is incorrect.
Forbs came directly after, and we learned about different flowering plants in the Union Bay Natural Area, including Morning Glory, tall buttercups, common dandelions and skunk cabbage, which I didn't know was a flowering plant until I found out where the flowers actually are on the structure. The tour also went over the pollinators each plant tries to attract and how they are pollinated. The plants the tour went over are almost all flowering angiosperms that rely on pollinating in at least some capacity for reproduction and breeding, in comparison to all of the tours so far this was much more prominent in each station of the tour. There were also a lot more examples in the Union Bay Natural Area than in other parts of campus, so it is most likely the best place, at least in this season, to observe a multitude of native or adapted fungi and forbs on campus.

Posted on May 30, 2012 08:40 PM by meganwaskom