Friday, October 13th (Melzar Hatch Preserve)

This Friday, I visited the Melzar Hatch Preserve. It was a sunny day, but it was still cool because of the wind. I think I managed to find all four main groups of land plants, including mosses, ferns, trees, and flowers. I also found an interesting-looking fuzzy caterpillar.
In terms of the four main groups of plants, I found some mosses, identified as forkmosses by iNaturalist; this is an example of bryophyta, or nonvascular plants. I also found an example of polypodiopsida, or seedless vascular plants, in cinnamon ferns. I found a pine tree, an example of gymnosperms, or non-flowering seed plants. All of the other plants I found, including barberries, goldenrods, and dandelions, were examples of angiosperms, or flowering plants. It was really nice to see this kind of biodiversity; there’s so much variation in appearance despite land plants being a monophyletic group. It was also interesting to see how they all these plants coexisted in the same space, despite being so different. This nature walk was really interesting, because it allowed me to look at and appreciate the diversity of land plants, and to see the distinct differences between the different types that I would usually ignore.

Publicado el 17 de octubre de 2023 por mhernon