Chestnut Hill Reservoir and Pine Tree Preserve October 12, 2020

This afternoon, I went on a nature walk around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir and the Pine Tree Preserve on the edge of Boston College's campus. It was cloudy and quite chilly today, and it was very windy. For this walk, I focused on plants as they are this week's theme. I saw nonvascular plants - the crisped pincushion growing on a tree, and seductive entodon moss growing on some rocks. I spotted some hay-scented fern, an example of seedless vascular plants. I checked under the fronds and they were not producing spores. I found cones from a pine tree, a gymnosperm. I also spotted various angiosperms - black-eyed Susans with beautiful yellow flowers, oak trees with some type of organism eating their leaves, and Amur Honeysuckle which was fruiting small red berries. I had a great conversation with a woman who taught me about Tree-of-Heaven, an invasive plant species native to China that grows and chokes its host. The Tree-of-Heaven reproduces very quickly and kills native species. It is also known to have very foul-smelling flowers. On my walk, I also spotted lots of fungi that were very interesting to observe as they had many different morphologies. Many of them were growing on dead trees, some of which seemed to have been killed by the Tree-of-Heaven. I spotted so much interesting biodiversity so close to campus. It was also very interesting to learn about the invasive Tree-of-Heaven.

הועלה ב-אוקטובר 13, 2020 03:10 לפנה"צ על ידי caelalembo