Diario de jacobcoons

Today I woke up, and it was 80 degrees and sunny, the perfect weather to take my nature walk this week. Since I am staying at a resort, the moment I stepped out of my condo, I was greeted by a wide selection of plants to observe. While some of them are gardened, when I made my way around the back of the resort and to the beach there were a lot more plants. One of the first plants I observed was a Giant Taro, I was very surprised to learn what type of plant it was since I had been eating taro for the past two weeks and never knew that is what it looked like! The leaves are almost bigger than me, so they must be able to absorb a lot of sunlight. On my walk, I also saw a lot of moss by the waterfall. It makes sense that I would find them here because they need water to fertilize since they lake pollen. I also saw some ferns with spores on the bottom of the leaves! My favorite part of my walk was seeing all of the different palm trees. My favorite palm tree is the royal palm, but the traveler's palm was by far the most distinct. Its leaves opened to make the whole tree look like one giant fan. I also saw a wide variety of flowers. The birds of paradise were very cool looking since they mimic the shape of a bird. I also thought that the hibiscus flowers I saw were a very good example of the anatomy of a flower. Overall, I thought this was a very successful walk, and even though I wasn't in the jungle, I could still observe nature all around me!

Last Tuesday, my family and I drove through the heart of Kauai to see Waimea Canyon. While we were in the dense jungle, I was determined to find some fungi for my observations this week. I talked to an expert that knew all the different trails, and they pointed me to the Berry Flats Trail. While the trail was only 0.6 miles long, I walked around for about 45 minutes. The entrance was very narrow and steep at first, but it soon opened up to this forest of redwood trees. It was breathtaking. I wasn't very hopeful that I would be able to find any fungi very easily since I had never noticed them on previous trips and hikes, and it wasn't Hawaii's wet season. However, I found a giant colony of fungi decomposing a fallen tree about five minutes into my walk. As I continued my search, I heard a lot of movement in the bushes. It was startling at first, but then out of the foliage came a big rooster!

When the path opened up more, we were greeted with a large area to explore. There I found two stumps with Fungi growing on them. They were much smaller than the last ones that I had observed, but it looked like the stump was fairly new. I expect there will be more if I visit in the future. At the end of the trail, the path goes further downhill to a much cooler and wetter section of the forest. There I found a massive fungus growing on another dead tree. As we were walking back to the car, my dad noticed a lot of fungi right in front of our car growing on a living tree! Looking for different fungi made this walk a lot more fun because we all had a goal in mind; I didn't even mind that it was 85 degrees out. I can't wait for my next adventure!