Spring Break Hike

I went to the beach in San Diego and observed a few items, but my main hike was up the fire trail behind Clark Kerr. What I learned most about was the wide variety of wild plants and wild life that live here! It is definitely possible to get 50 different taxa. I would have done that but birds, lizards, and bugs kept escaping my phone's lens. I also found it interesting that the two sides of the trail had completely different taxa depending on the sun light, the different zones were quite stark and you could see the environmental reasons why (sun/shade, where water runs in the rain, etc)

I also learned about fasciation, which is a mutation in the plant which makes the tissue of a vascular plant become flattened, ribbon-like, crested, or elaborately contorted. I have no idea what kind of plant I saw, I labelled it as "flowering plant" but it was definitely something I had never seen before. I actually thought it was just some strange plant that grew like that on purpose until I ironically saw an article on buzzfeed.com entitled "confused plants" and saw a similar looking mutation!

Posted on April 3, 2013 03:28 AM by lfel