ERS 346 - Outing #2

Time and Date: 19/10/12 14:30
Duration: 60 minutes
Location: Daniel Boone Forest, KY, USA
Weather: Sunny, 21 degrees, 25% cloud cover
Habitat: Base of sandstone cliffs in deciduous temperate forests.

Daniel Boone Forest is a super popular area for rock climbing due to all of the sandstone cliffs in the forest. There are usually people at the base of these cliffs and climbing on them. All of my observations for this journal entry are from the base of one of these cliffs in the forest.

Though there were some small plants growing along the base of the cliffs at the climbing spots, there were not many compared to cliffs that did not have climbers present. Also cliffs with poor rock quality (loose rock and dirt) had many more plants, and larger plants. This is probably due to the fact that people aren’t climbing there, but also there are more places for plants to take root when there are more cracks in the rock and areas with buildup of dirt. There were some mosses and lichens present, but I have attached two observations of some higher plants – a fern and an umbrella magnolia. These ferns and magnolias were growing throughout the forest, but these two plants growing on the rock were clearly stunted. The magnolia seemed to have taken root in a crack on a ledge, while the fern was growing out of a small dirt patch at the base of the cliff.

There were other types of magnolias as well. I found the shoots of the bigleaf magnolia growing at the edge of the forest and about 10m away from the cliff. The shoots were directly next to the tree itself, they were green and covered in some fuzzy material. The top of the shoot seemed to be very close to sprouting new leaves. There were leaf scars all down the shoot. Livingin Ontario, I am not very familiar with seeing so many magnolias, but just by looking at the magnolias, it seems that they only produce leaves at the terminal ends of the plant.

The pipe-organ wasp nests were all over the cliffs. At first I wasn’t sure if they were a fossil, but on evening I saw one of these nests on a wooden plank, so I then realized it must be a nest of some sort. I did not see any wasps the entire week being there, though I was not looking for them. All of the nests I saw seemed to be very damaged and old compared to pictures I saw online, maybe this has to do with the time of year I was there.

I found it interesting to see the same type of millipede I saw in my last journal post. The American Giant Millipede has a range from Ontario and Quebec to Texas (https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Narceus_americanus/), so it makes sense that I saw it both next to Georgian Bay and in Kentucky

Publicado el octubre 23, 2019 11:48 TARDE por jlpolgar