alexmichel's Journal

In this assignment, I inspected trees in people's front yards. I crunched, smelled, felt, counted, and photographed parts of each tree, as well as made extremely awkward eye contact with people watching me from their windows.

I also spilled a lot of coffee on sidewalks because I decided that walking around the neighborhood and drinking coffee from a mug while looking at trees is much more rewarding and exciting than mindlessly sipping from a to-go cup, like a giant baby-adult.

To answer Ritter's question, if I had to pick one of these trees to use as toilet paper, I'd probably go with the silk oak...that or the yucca. I'm not going to lie- this prompt makes me think botany professors just sit around and ask these types of questions of their students so they can call each other and go, "Hey...guess what one of my students would use as toilet paper... Toxicodendron diversilobum."

Continuing with the prompt... I grew up in a city where Heat Island Effect was oppressive, partially because street trees were few and far between, especially along commonly-used pedestrian routes. So, yes, I think street trees definitely make a neighborhood more pleasant. They also add to the visual appeal. No one likes a naked street.

A pro to planting non-native trees in our cities is that they might be better suited to meet specific society-driven purposes, such as the ability to bear certain types of fruit for urban food forests. A con is that the tree will likely not be as well-suited for the given environment as a native tree would be, and may require more resources such as water. This need may cause some non-native trees to uptake more available water, limiting water for native species, which could result in aggressive growth and invasive tendencies in the non-native species.

I get distracted easily and tend to jump on exciting ideas that pop into my head with an "I'll figure it out when I get there" mentality. So when I thought it'd be fun to explore parts of the canyon I haven't seen, too excited to look at a map or think about time, a quick morning hike turned into a 12-mile hike (which may be quick for some people, but not me) and all I had was an irresponsible amount of water and half a granola bar.

At least I saw cool plants.

A lot of the plants that immediately caught my eye, I already knew, but made observations of some, anyway. It wasn't until I dropped down into the canyon from the ridge that I found plants I wasn't at least familiar with. One of these plants was the Pellaea mucronata. I hardly noticed it because it was so small and delicate. I also thought it was interesting seeing a single Clarkia amongst stands of other species. I'm still not sure what the specific epithet is but I didn't find another one throughout the rest of the hike.

I thought it was pretty neat seeing different developmental stages within the same species as I dropped and rose again in elevation and explored along different aspects of the mountain (hill?...berm?). For example, on the Lizzie St. side of the hill, there was a plant with a head that looked gummy and gross. When I crossed over the ridge and dropped down lower into the canyon, I saw the same gross, gummy center surrounded by small purple petals. I also noticed that some of the blue-eyed grass was white on the northern face, which I'd never seen before. I'm still not sure why that is, but I'm guessing it has to do with sun availability or maturity.

Now for a note about turkey vultures: I used to think they were nothing but gangly, disgusting creeps of nature. Especially after being actively intimidated by one as I passed it one day, sitting on a fence post. However, after sitting and watching a flock(? ... herd?...pod?) of 4, flying northeast through the canyon, I saw something else. As they glided and followed the canyon, dropping and rising above the ridgeline, they never flapped their long wings. I lost count of the seconds between flaps because I started counting mid-glide and never saw a flap at all. I watched them paint long ovals in the heat of the sky, moving independently but always circling back to a close proximity between themselves that made it seem like they were checking in, making sure they were all together. I thought it was a really beautiful blend of independence and unity. I could be wrong. Maybe they are just gross and weird.