Biology Spring 2017 - Naturalist Perspectives

Site Beta Location: Harvard Campus near the glass wall of the Casperson Student Center Date: 4/17/17 Time: 9:40 pm Weather Conditions: Clear skies. Slight breeze. 54℉. Site Beta is pretty and seems very intentionally cultivated. There are tall flowers with large white petals (most have 6 petals in total) and yellow centers. There are also light greenish brown clumps of vegetation that look sort of grassy and scrubby, but in an intentional and contained way. There were also small bushes (rough estimate of 3 feet high) that looked like a tangle of twigs sticking up out of the same little patch of ground. They have small green buds starting maybe a foot or so up from the ground. There was no other vegetation crowding around the base of these shrubs. In some areas, there was actually a very clear circle within which only a single large plant was growing. I enjoyed Emma Marris's TED talk, and I think she raises interesting questions. What Marris said about not having ...

Location: Photo taken from between the only two good hammock trees in John F. Kennedy Park, Cambridge, MA Date: 4/8/2017 Time: 12:45pm Weather: Overcast but not raining. 48°F The bank of the river where I conducted my transect was mostly just grass and mud. Judging by the groomed appearance of the nearby park, and the plant growth visible along the bank near less populated areas, I suspect that this lack of ecological diversity has a lot to do with intentional maintenance on the part of the city. If left alone for a few years, I imagine there would be a substantial increase in plant life in that area. Then again, it is right by a road, so the area is subject to both foot and vehicular traffic. I imagine that also plays a role in the presence of plant life. I decided that it was better to not bring my phone down by the water's edge. There is nearby traffic, an incline, and not only am I not the most coordinated, I also startle fairly easily. That said, I think the lack of subst...

Site Alpha Location: 16 Berkeley St in Cambridge, MA Date: 4/2/2017 Time: 5pm Weather: Decent. Sunny. 55°F There were no dramatic changes in the specific area where I did the transect last time. There was less snow and fewer dead leaves. My guess about the reason the plants looked droopy (they had been tamped down by the snow) seems to have been false. The plants still looked like they had been flattened. They seemed a little less brown, but I forgot my phone so I could not compare it to the pictures I had taken for the first post. A few feet away from the specific tract where I did my initial transect, there was dramatic growth. There were crocus shoots popping up and some tiny succulent that I think looks kind of like a cabbage but also sort of a succulent rose type thing. It definitely is not a cabbage, and I don't think it is a rose, but I cannot seem to figure out what it actually is. There was also some ivy growing on the ground. Properties of life evident at Site Al...