Today was fairly mundane, until I got this article from a newsletter, its written by two boys that were on the walk I lead a few weeks ago.
Sorry for the weird pagination etc, it was ripped from a PDF
"Young Naturalists Club
Explorer Day in Sept, 2011
“Don’t Bark up the Wrong tree”
On September 25, we went for a tree walk on the Riverview hospital
grounds with Paul Buikema. It was really great to get outdoors and
have a walk, even though there was a wind warning and the sky looked
like it would rain any time. The bad weather held off until we finished
our walk and then it got really windy.
There are lots of amazing trees on the Riverview hospital grounds.
We’ll tell you about a few that Paul showed us.
First we looked at a dead tree. In most places, it would be removed
for fear that it would fall on your house or car but lots of plants and
animals can use a dead tree, so it’s good if you can just leave it
there. This dead tree had lots of woodpecker holes in it, because the
woodpecker can find bugs to eat under the bark. There was also a hard
kind of fungus that looked like a shelf. It is called artists conk and if you
find it on your tree it’s a sign it’s in distress. We saw another fungus,
too, called a turkey tail, and it really looked like one. There was a large
tree with big leaves which were fuzzy on one side. The tree grows very
fast because it was only about twenty years old and we all fit under it.
The seeds are big and heavy so the tree depends on animals to spread
the seeds in their poop. It is called a paulownia tree. Some of the trees’ leaves have started to change colour. Green
leaves have chlorophyll in them, which uses the nutrients the tree
gets from the ground and the sun and the rain and the air to make
food for the tree. In the fall, the leaves lose the chlorophyll so then the
other colours that are in the leaf show. The maple leaves we saw were
purple. Paul told us that the plant “food” you see in stores isn’t really
food; the plant makes its own food.
The lawn is really nice at Riverview. It’s very smooth and green.
But if you look closely, you see it’s not just one kind of grass. There
are English daisies and yarrow and clover and even dandelions. The
gardeners at Riverview keep everything mowed but the variety of
plants is better for the environment. You don’t need to use weed killer
to get rid of plants like yarrow because they’re just as nice as the grass
you might have in your yard.
There was a circle of big trees with low branches almost touching
the ground where you could have a picnic on a nice day. They are
called catalpa trees and their seeds are like long beans. The schoolyard
where William goes has catalpa trees. The flowers smell nice in spring.
We saw a pine tree with male and female pinecones on the same
tree. The tree depends on insects moving pollen from the male
seed to the female seed to produce more trees. Our favourite tree was the snake bark maple. Its leaves didn’t look
like regular maple leaves and the bark was very smooth and looked
just like a green snake’s skin. The seeds were exactly like a regular
maple tree’s seeds and flew like a helicopter. Paul said if you were
thinking about planting a Japanese maple, you should think about this
one instead because it’s a nice tree and not as common.
That was the last tree we saw on our walk. Just as we were saying
goodbye the wind started blowing and all sorts of things blew off the
trees as we ran to our cars.
Anthony (12) and William (9) Taylor"