Max's+Page

When I started going out to the eco plot the ground was covered in snow so it was hard to see what life was around except for a few footprints. When it got warmer we could see more plants and animals emerging into the ecosystem from their long hibernation. Now the eco plot is full of life again with many diffferent insect and plant life.

One of the projects we did was called the Tulgrin Funnel. What we did is we took a soil sample from the eco plot and the top half of a cut in half soda bottle. We stuck a light over it that sat on while we were on spring trips and when we came back we found microorganism at the bottom because they were trying to escape the light. We then took them and stuck them on trays to look at under microscopes and. recorded observations in our field journals.

The weather we encounted over the year was pretty much the normal bipolar philly weather. One of the things that effected our ecoplot differently than it would have in other years is that we had a very excessive amount of snow this year. However the good thing about the snow is that we were able to see the tracks of the animals residing in the area so we could identify them.

English Ivy also known as Hedera Helix was one of the more dominant plants in the eco system. English Ivy is a climbing plant that can grow 20m-30m high. English Ivy is usually found growing on trees walls or high cliff faces but it can even be found on the ground. The fruits range from a purply black to an orangy yellow, although an important food for birds it is somewhat poisonous to humans.



Ground hogs are the main mammal lurking around the eco plot. They are mainly herbivourus creatures feeding off of grasses or plant life however they are known to eat small animals such as snails grubs and grasshoppers. Garlic Mustard also known as Alliaria Petiolata. Garlic Mustard is a deep rooted thin plant that usually matures while laying dormant through the winter then as spring comes its seeds mature and are shot from the plant to distances as a far as 7 meters. Garlic Mustard is edible by humans. It has a taste of dull garlic and dull mustard. They are used in many salads and pestos and were once medicinal



= Wineberry is a form of a rasberry known as Rubus Phoenicolasius. The plant is a perrenial plant the go's through its cycle once a year. Wineberry is originally native to places such as China Japan and Korea. The europeans and americans brought the plant to the their countries to make a hybrid berry with their own rasberrys but the plant has gotten out and is now a natural part of the surrounding eco systems even though it is classified as an invasive species. =

. AAfter doing our final analysis of the ecoplot i have come to the conclusion that it is a relativly healthy plot of land however some may say it is unhealthy because of the species that live there. Alot of the plants in the ecoplot are invasive species, most of them are from europe with a few asian plants such as an asian bittersweet, and the most dominant european species was by far the english ivy.