Everyday when I go to the Y, I pass a sign for a county park, and everyday I've been wanting to take that road to check it out. So yesterday as we were heading home I took the detour. The weather was perfect and I discovered an arboretum at this particular county park. I wasn't much in the mood to be indoors on such a nice day, so we had a spontaneous field trip. IT WAS AWESOME. I was very surprised at how much fun and learning took place. The kids ran from tree to tree wanting to know what kind each was. They hunted for seeds and fruit underneath each. I was fascinated. And I've finally determined that Jim was right; the tree in our backyard is an oak.
Today we dug through our finds (not enough time yesterday) and the kids organized them into categories.
Here we have a walnut from a black walnut tree, a chestnut, and three other walnuts. The tree had a different name (which I forget) but it was in the walnut family, and if you open the fruit you find a walnut in the middle!
The top two leaves are from an oak tree; I now want to find out what is growing on each leaf. The red ones were really beautiful yesterday although I don't remember what they came from. I think we definitely need to go back in the fall to see the colors! The little seeds were found under some willow trees.
A fresh and a dry seed from one tree. I forget the type again...
Acorns! The kids loved hunting for acorns under the oak trees.
Pine cones! I was impressed with how many different types of pine cones they found.
Finally, we have crab apples. During our whole walk they were wondering if we'd find any fruit trees because I'd read on the county park rules that you were allowed to pick fruit as long as you didn't harm the mother plant. There were lots of crab apple trees and they took samplings from several types. One tree had lots of ripe fruit, so they even ate one while we were there. We brought home a few of those ripe ones to enjoy for later too. I'm thinking that I'd like to go back sometime to pick a lot of the ripe crab apples, so we can have crab apple jelly...yum!
Here they are with their display!
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