11/29/20
Weather: 40˚F and sunny
My new phenology site is at my aunt and uncle’s house in Montpelier, where I am staying over break. The spot I chose is on the edge of a man-made pond, and a forest that is primarily American beech, as well as striped maple, red maple, paper birch, and a few coniferous trees like hemlock and what I think are red spruce and young eastern white pines. This site is somewhat similar to my previous site, in that it is a mixture of forest and wetland, however this site is primarily deciduous trees rather than hemlock and eastern white pine, and there is a pond instead of just a marsh. Unfortunately, my knowledge of the plants in the wetlands is pretty limited, and it is especially hard to distinguish them since they are all dead, so I can’t compare the two wetlands that well, but I would imagine there are a lot of the same plants since the environments are very similar. Overall the forest at this site feels less dense, and there is much more American beech than in Centennial Woods. Most of the decaying leaves on the ground are American beech. I also found some striped maple leaves, although I did not see the actual trees, and my site in Centennial Woods did not have any striped maple. It is a little sad that I didn’t get to go home for break, because I would have loved to compare the coniferous forest in Idaho to my little area of Centennial Woods, but I still appreciated being able to examine another area of Vermont closely, and spot the small differences and similarities to my site in Burlington. The final thing to point out is the man-made rock wall which I included a picture of because it reminded me of the rock walls from Vermont’s hill farming days. There is a large chunk of quartz in the rock wall, and I found a lot of other massive pieces of quartz while exploring the forest. I wonder if students in 100 years will look at this rock wall and study its history.
Sources:
How to identify New England Trees (Coniferous). (2019, July 27). Retrieved from https://kidsendehors.com/guide-to-coniferous-trees/