Sustainability and the Environment: "Plant Day!"

I bet you're feeling like you could really use a good dose of Costa Rican Natural History, aren't you? Well you got lucky this time, that's for sure, because Saturday the 22nd of February was Plant Day, one of the coolest days of Adam's Costa Rican Natural History course. On this day, the adventurers would travel way up high into the cloud forest to learn about all the different plants as they hiked up the mountain through different life zones, up to the continental divide, and back out of the jungle the very way they'd come. 

Sam the TA knew that this would be a long, hunger-inducing day for the adventurers, so he made sure to come prepared with lots of snacks...

If an apple a day is good for you, then nine a day must make you just about invincible. Especially if they're from a dirty backpack  

Well the adventurers mustered their energy, waved goodbye to their taxi drivers, and headed up with Adam, Sam the TA, and the photographer into the cloud forest. Since it was an awful big cloud forest and there were 17 of these adventures, Adam enlisted the help of a graduate student named Emily who was doing research in Monteverde, and a local plant genius named Willow, who is some sort of major celebrity in the world of plants, Monteverde, and ecology in general, in case you didn't know. Might want to get her autograph the next time you see her. 

The students take a learning-breather on their way through the jungle 

Up here in the cloudy mountains, Adam taught the adventurers about these cool things called Epiphytes, which are basically plants that grow on other plants, like Bromeliads growing on the branches of a tree. That's one of the reasons this cloud forest gets so dense; even the branches of trees have little plants growing on them, and sometimes there're plants growing on the epiphytes too, and these are called Epiphylls

Chandler is impressed with the Epiphytes 

As they journeyed further up the mountain, Adam taught the adventurers about life zones, and how the elevation affects the density and types of flora that make their homes on the slopes of the green mountain. 

Willow and Adam discuss life zones and canopy species; see how these trees aren't nearly as tall?

Eventually, with enough walking uphill, the adventurers reached the continental divide, where they could look down on the Caribbean side of the ridge instead of the Pacific. Naturally, it was awful windy up there.  

Much photo-taking and laughing into the win ensued 

After a brief time spend on the mountain top, taunting the wind to try to blow them off into the Caribbean, the adventurers sated their craving for misty wind and clouds and turned back, heading down the Pacific slope again.

Adam hides behind a tree to try to make Amanda think that he's a jaguar. It only kind of worked.

There was an awful big and muddy hill that the adventurers got to scamper down on their journey down the ridge, which made the excursion pretty great by all accounts. They only got a little muddy anyway.

Meg makes the most of getting a little muddy 

When they made it down the trail a bit, Adam split the students up into smaller groups; one group went with Willow, one group went with Emily, and one followed Adam around the forest. These smaller groups took out their notes and started writing down all the facts about the plants that their experts found as they wandered around the jungle for a bit. Adam told them that they were going to have a quiz on all this stuff at the end of the day, so the adventurers made sure they paid attention.

  Typical Saturday morning cloud forest classroom 

They saw an awful lot up there in that cloud forest. Some of the adventurers even saw a beautiful Quetzal, but wouldn't you know it, the photographer wasn't following that group around. Figures.

After they'd seen maybe one percent of the cloud forest, it was time for lunch, so the adventurers went galloping down the mountain to eat tasty Quesadillas to fuel their bodies for the afternoon. Plant day was only halfway done, after all.  

  Emma, Aislyn, and half of Meg's face pose for a little photo on the bridge

Well they ate their tasty lunch, took a little thirty minute break, and then headed upstairs for a tag-team-lecture from Willow and Adam. A day before, Adam had brought up a bunch of plants and flowers, including some lilies and orchids, and this afternoon the students were going to set to tear them to pieces (I mean dissect them) to learn about the different parts of a flower. 

Here's Willow teaching them how to tear the flowers apart 

Dan offers Aislyn a flower, but she already has one. Bummer. 

 Here's Leah and Rachel dissecting orchids under the microscopes

After they'd ripped all the lilies and orchids apart, they learned about the different types of pollinators and seed dispersers. They discussed how you can identify what type of animal or force pollinates a plant or disperses its seeds based on certain criteria and characteristics of the plants. 

After they gained all this new knowledge, they were just itching to go around applying it somehow. Lucky for the adventurers, Adam had set up a bunch of plants around the classroom and now asked the students to go around and try to figure out the pollinators and dispersers for each one. 

 Detectives Amanda and Tessa try to get a read on these tricky plants

  Here's Willow revealing the secret identities

 And finally, it was time for the quiz. Adam split the adventurers up into smaller groups again and then they went back out into the forest, and the instructors wandered around and pointed out cool plants and examples of the things they'd learned that morning, and all the adventurers answered right away, because they were basically plant geniuses by now, and they knew everything. 

Adam quizzes the adventurers  

And that was plant day! In less than a week, the adventurers will be leaving for their first field trip, which is pretty exciting, so stay tuned for all the updates about their explorations and discoveries in the land of Costa Rica.