Today was another predominately lecture day. Unfortunately the sun was out for a good portion of the lecture. Basically today we covered the basics of biodiversity. How habitat loss and destruction are the major contributing factors, and brainstormed some idea of how to end habitat loss.
At 11:00 we luckily got to take a small trip to the local regional park, Waharau. (Picture to the left). On our walk we talked about a multitude of species. One species in particular is called Lancewood. To the right is a picture of when it is just a juvenile. As it grows older the leaves change to more of a broad shape. They can grow to be quite tall and have slender trunks. We all thought they looked a bit like Dr. Seuss trees, though our field leader said that there are trees which look just like truffula trees (can't wait!) We also saw a tree called Rewarewa. The area that we were hiking around had previously been farmland (cleared with fires), and that the Rewarewa bark is fairly resistent to fires and that's most likely why the tree we saw was so large. We also got to see what are called kidney ferns. They look like these kidney shaped leaves just sticking out of the ground. What's cool is that in dry climates the leaves completely
curl up, dry up,
and then re-open when rain falls.
Again we saw tons of tree ferns. Which, like I said before get to be huge. They look kind of like palm trees (and you think for a moment that you could be in Costa Rica-although NZ does have what are considered temperate rain forests).
Well I should get to my reading, since I have a presentation tomorrow.