Botany Tour

I know this is a little bit early, but I wanted to tell everybody about the botanical tour that Hannah, Rochelle, Rachel, Graham and I went on this past weekend. Our tour began in Morris Woods behind the English house, where Rachel and Graham showed us a plant that mimicked other  native plants in its surroundings in order to survive. I don't recall its name, but I've been calling it the "Chameleon" Plant (like in my recent Serendip post, for example). The Chameleon plant had a distinct burning tar smell (as Rachel described it), which distinguished it from a neighboring plant which looked almost exactly the same, but smelled more like "green peppers". Another plant nearby also had similar leaves, but had a more lemon or citrus smell to it. A yue tree was next on our botany tour; Rachel and Graham told us that it was very poisonous, and that we should probably wash our hands after touching it. We quickly moved on to a Beech Tree, which several Bryn Mawr students had carved into. Rachel commented on this, explaining that Beech wood couldn't be used for very much because it was a weaker type of wood. Both explained that they had played a game outin Morris, where students had to close their eyes and try to identify trees. The comment led me to believe that their class may be a little more environmentally based than our seminar, even though we both have been doing similar readings and discussion exercises in class. Both classes clearly have trouble getting to actual reading material because of in depth discussion; I'm conflicted reagrading this subject because I enjoy the enthusiasm of our in-class discussions, but at the same time I would like to explore our readings in a little more depth. Overall, our time with Rachel and Graham was informative, and it was nice to see the parallels and differences between our two classes.