01 February 2021: Winter Updates and Things to Come
Howdy!
I've successfully navigated the holiday season given the current global pandemic!
I have been able to identify most of the specimens I collected in October, save some Graminae. The goal is to have them all identified before I start collection trips at the end of February.
I was able to collect a lot of plants in the genus Symphyotrichum and quickly realized the hair pulling agony of trying to differentiate similar looking species. I've come to the conclusion that for some of the first collections I made for this project will need to be recollected again. Nothing wrong with that! In fact it actually will help me learn and focus on important parts of the plants before collecting them so that my iNaturalist photos don't exclude important information.
Also, just a fun tid-bit from what I learned as I write-up my thesis proposal. The park saw about 220,000 visitors in 2019 (and that number is expected to be higher in 2020 due to the pandemic. That means that there are potentially millions of park goers who will interact with this project! Quite exciting.
-Matthew
