nfs's Journal

I hiked the fire trail today to see what I could find in the chaparral on the south facing side of the hills and in the moist evergreen forest on the north side.

I found mushrooms in both ecosystems, although there were more in the evergreen forest. This makes sense, as mushrooms like a wet environment. I was probably only able to find them in the chaparral because of the the recent rain.

The plants I found in the chaparral had small leaves to conserve water, whereas, most of the plants had larger leaves in the moist evergreen forrest. The fern I found in the moist evergreen forest also depends on a fair amount of water in order to disperse its spores.

The salamander I found, being an amphibian, also needs water nearby, and I found it underneath a wet log. The moist evergreen forest also has lots of moist decomposing logs, which seem to be the ideal habitat for centipedes like the one I found.

Here's what I found on my hike in Strawberry canyon. The Periwinkle was one of the species we looked at in class -- it is a dicot because it has an uneven number of petals. The Scotch Broom is in the pea family because it has irregular petals. The tree with white flowers is another dicot with five petals.

The most interesting species I observed on my hike for homework five was the Fairy Fingers fungus (Clavaria fragilis). Although it occurs throughout the northern hemisphere, in North America it is more common east of the Rocky Mountains, so it's pretty cool that I got to see it here! It has also been found in Australia and South Africa. In Europe C. fragilis is an indicator species of old unimproved grassland. Since many of these grasslands are threatened in Europe, C. fragilis is a threatened fungi in the Netherlands and Slovenia. C. fragilis is the most common species in the Clavaria genus in North America, but there are several similar species such as C. acuta, C. atkinsoniana, and C. rubicundula.