Plant Life Around Campus

Tree Types

Bradford Pear Tree



     The Bradfor Pear Tree, or scientifically known as Pyrus callerana, is native to China and Vietnam. It blooms unpleasant smelling flowers in the spring time, much like the smell of fish. They also produce a fruit that is hard but softened by winter and then eaten by birds. These trees are tough survivers and usually die due to harsh weather conditions.

Willow Oak Trees

 

     The Willow Oak Tree, scientifically known as Quercus phellos, is native to North Amercia. It is a red oak that has leaves shaped like willow leaves, and produces acorns. These trees are manily found in low floodplains.

Yoshino Cherry Trees

 

     Yoshino Cherry Trees, scientifically known as Prunus yedoensis, is a natural hybrid found world wide. The flowers that bloom are fragrant and usually grow in clumps of five or six. It produces small cherries that are an important food sourse to small birds and taste only mildly sweet to humans.

 

Shrub Types

 

Virginia Sweetspire

     Virginia Sweetspire, or Itea virginica, is found mainly in the southern United States. It is a colonizing plant that has many stems that branch frequently. Small white flowers bloom in June that are showy. It produces small capsules.

 

Elephant Ears

     Elephant Ear plants, also known as Colocasia, is named so because the leaves are shaped like real elephant ears. They are native to southeatern Asia. This plant causes discomfort in the lips, mouth and throat caused by needlelike things that contain some kind of chemical property.

 

Holly Bush

     Holly Bushes, scientifically known as Ilex, has at least 400 different species types that are widespread throughout temperate and subtropical ecosystems. They are slow-growing and many are evergreen trees. The leaves are glossy and are spiny or serrated around the edges. They produces drupes that range in color.

 

Flower Types

 

Angel Trumpet Flowers















     Angel Trumpet Flowers, Brugmansia, have a strong pleasing fragrance in the evenings that attract pollunating moths and come in shades of white, pink, yellow, and green. They are native to South American tropics.

 

Lantana Flowers

     Lantana flowers, apart of the verbena family, are native to the tropic regions of the Americas and Africa. The clusters of flowers change colors as they mature and are poisonous to most animals, even though their fruit is eaten by birds.

Marigold Flowers

     Marigolds, or Tagetes, is native to North and South America. They grow well in most types of soil and are usually gold, yellow, or orange in color.They are usually musky but have been bred to have no odor. They deter some insect pests so are used widely in gardens.







River Lab

For our river lab, we looked at three different kinds of measurements within the river system. Although we only got to two of them, we still know how the third one is done.
      So starting with flow rate, we measure this by using units of distance over units of time. We used an empty soda bottle that we found floating by one of the banks and started with the deeper channel. (the river was split into three channels due to two sand islands.) Here the bottle traveled from one group to the next taking a couple of minutes for a distance of about 50 yards. In the shallowest channel the bottle did not travel at all, but instead spun in circles. To see how the measurement looks when it's done, here's an example: The object travels 100ft in 1 minute = 100/1 = 100 ft/min. Only one person actually had the flow rate times so I don't know the actual numbers.
     The second measurement done was clam populations in different levels of sand, in water and out of water. The group that did this found that there were not as many clams in the sand islands as there were in the sand under the water level. (River bed) Again, only a few people have those numbers.
     Finally, the last measurement we were supposed to do was the transect line which measures the elevations across the river starting from one river bank and going straight across to the other side. For this you use two poles with measurements of about 6 inch increments marked on them, and a string with the length of 10 feet connecting the poles. Here's an example of how it looks when it's done

 

So now that you have a visual, what you do is you take the number on the first pole and subtract it from the number on the second pole and it gives you the elevation change within that 10 foot line. Here's a graph of the data from last year:

 



Sorry I could not put up a google earth shot of where we did this, my computer won't allow me too.

Video Post

A video on the recent earthquakes around the world.

Map Types

Choropleth Maps express to us the differences between bordered areas that are either different colors or patterns. Differences can vary between population sizes to income groups or as we see above, tones.

Dot Density Maps are consisted of dots that represent a value of something such as crops grown or in this case housing locations in Florida.

 

Bathymetric maps depict water depths using lines that have different depth values and most times are colored in like the one above to show the depths.

 

Proportional Symbol maps have different sizes of a symbol to represent data from specific locations on a map. In this one particular the different areas of each circle show coal consumption by state.