March 27th, 2025
Today my friend Katie and I completed the phenology walk assignment! Unfortunately we didn’t get any pictures 🙁 .
We noticed that none of the trees had breaking buds (apart from white oak which only had a few), and that none of them showed signs of new or expanding leaves or pollen production. We did notice that in the red oak and white oak dead leaves from the previous season were still retained. I’m not sure if this counts as a phenophase but it was common amongst the oaks! We also saw that other trees that weren’t the specific ones assigned had flowers and breaking buds; notably silver maples and red maples had very clear signs of these changes.
It was very nice to walk around and just notice and observe the trees closer than usual.
On NPN’s website I read an article titled “Are plant and animal species responding differently to climate change?” The article was very relevant to what we have been learning in class about phenological mismatches. I learned that, in general, plants are phenologically responding more to climate change than animals. For example, flowers are blooming earlier but in a time period where pollinating insects aren’t out and about. Going off of this information, as climate change worsens this problem could be exacerbated and soon enough basic organismal interactions could be out of whack.
Wow. that got a bit dark.
Overall this experience made me think a lot more about the small changes that are always happening and that make a big difference in our daily experience of the world.
See ya next time!