The second week of ecology was the best because Sally came back. Sally was our instructor for the first two weeks and by far our favorite. She was late for the field trip though, and being left alone in a gravel lot for an extra ten minutes forced us to find alternate means of entertainment. Good thing there were no hills in the parking lot!!!
Once she arrived, we headed out to the marshes where she taught us about the different tidal zones, the salinity differences between them, and the plant life. One of the plants was parasitic and looked a lot like orange silly string. It was everywhere! We also saw a lot of wolf spiders in the marsh. Many of them had eggs on their backs and we searched through the sedges to find one carrying their young (Baby wolf spiders will often pile onto their mother's back for protection).
One of the plants is commonly called pickleweed. It gets its name because it looks a lot like a pickle and is really salty. It is an edible plant and is classified as halophilic, which means, appropriately, salt-loving. Jim ate quite a few of these on our field trip, and quite a few plants that were not pickleweed before he realized his mistake in identifying the plant. So far he doesn't seem to sick so I am going to assume that the others were at least somewhat edible too!!
(If you think he has a funny look on his face here, you should have seen the look on his face when he realized he was eating the wrong plant!)
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