Field Journal Blog 4
It was Monday, October 19th, 2009 around 9:30 a.m. It was sunny, but cold about 1O C. In the past week it was cold with a large amount of precipitation, followed by a dry but frigid (mountain day and) weekend. I had my first observed snow in the purple Valley on Friday at 6:30 a.m. We had no accumulation of snow. There was a moderate amount of wind that would blow intermittently.
There was frost on the flower boxes on the bridge leading into the cemetery. It was relatively thick. I left my finger on the frost for a few seconds and did not fully thaw the wood I had touched. There was also some frost on the roofs of several of the buildings in the cemetery and in select patches of grass that were particularly well shaded. By the time that I had left, there was no longer any visible frost in the cemetery area.
I heard a chattering noise, which was not a bird, as I had originally thought, but a small red squirrel. I also saw a blue jay fly across the cemetery, along with some black capped chickadees. This is drastically less animal life than what I had seen a week before at the same time. In part, this is probably due to some staff mowing the cemetery lawn with a large sit-on mower towards the end of my visit, which was very loud and could have scared off animals. However, this does not explain the difference, as there were few animals before any mowing. The weather could be at fault, but it does seem early for most of these species to leave the area. Perhaps the cold temperature this morning deterred too much animal activity.
The weather has had a noticeable effect upon the plants in the area as well. The butternut, formerly misidentified as black walnut, had lost all of its leaves and nuts. The leaves were still green and often still attached to a branch while lying on the ground below the tree. The leaves were wet and soggy, unlike the crisp maple leaves that blanket the ground within the woods. The Norway Maple is still green, and still has most of its seeds attached to its branches. The seeds are brown and have a dry, brittle and ribbed texture along the wing, and a smooth texture along the seed, itself. The pokeweed’s leaves were dead, but still attached to the plant. They lazily dangled, soggy, and wet. They were still green, but darker than the living leaves. The berries were all gone. Elsewhere in the cemetery, there were large pokeweed plants that still had living leaves and even some unripe green berries. The dramatic difference in timing seems strange, given the close proximity.
The sumac, which had fuzzy branches and fuzzier red fruits, still had a few leaves. Unlike the other plants, the leaves that were still on the tree were furthest out along the branches, near the fruits. This happens because the leaves closer to the center are shaded from the outer lying leaves. Since the shade provides warmth, rather than cold, the lower leaves change color later. This temperature does not explain the phenomenon, I suspect that this might have to do with attracting birds to the fruits or the amount of sunlight reaching the leaves, as both could explain why the leaves at the ends of the branches would turn last.
The honeysuckle that dominates large portions of the woods, still had green leaves that had a rough texture, and shriveled red or orange fruits. Buckthorn also had green leaves, but still had lots of black berries that looked very ripe. Grape had lost its leaves, but had some shriveled small grapes. The white snake root had seeds where its flowers used to exist, which had soft and scratchy white flowers.
The winged euonymus’ leaves were still green, which seemed strange because I have seen these plants with bright red leaves in town, along in the area outside of pine cobble. Due to the warmer climate at pine cobble, I would expect that the plants there would change later than those on campus.