Final Impressions

Looking back on my first blog post, my views on plants have definitely changed. I did not know much about plants before this semester so there has been a lot of new information to absorb in the past few months. I definitely never gave much thought to how many useful drugs and other compounds come from plants. I also never realized, that for some species, how fleetingly their flowers are blooming. Eastern redbud, Flowering dogwood, and even the Azaleas in front of the sorority townhouses all had flowers that bloomed and fell off within the span of a few weeks. Another new discovery was how quickly our site went from a bald wintery landscape to dense with leaves and bright flowers. I never knew how quickly all this happened until I had to track certain species' phenology. At the beginning of the semester I thought identifying and memorizing a large number of plants would not be as difficult as it has been. During my interim class we only used the common names, but memorized nearly one hundred different birds. This past semester, I've learned that I am very bad at memorizing scientific names and it probably has to do with my incapability to spell even english words. I did however really enjoy being outside as much as I was for this class. I enjoyed going to different sites and getting out of the classroom. I did underestimate the amount of time I would have to spend at our project site. On our first visit, Shay and I probably spent four hours successfully identifying two trees. Since then we have obviously improved our identification skills but it was often difficult to coordinate our schedules so that we would have enough time to do what was necessary. Overall I have a broader understanding of plants and their usefulness and I do enjoy annoying my friends by identifying plants around them. I'll conclude with my favorite plants of the semester. My favorite would have to be Trillium cuneatum. I thought our pressed specimens turned out great and I love how trillium looks like a little alien plant that I would have been freaked out by before knowing what it is. I also really enjoy Magnolia grandiflora and wish we would've been able to press a flower.