The Botanical Gardens!!

I have been pretty busy the last few days, but today is a lounge day and I am fully enjoying it. So here is what has been going on the past few days..

Thursday, I set up part 1/3 of my experiment. I am using 3 streams, representing an urbanization gradient. The stream next to El Verde field station represents the lowest level of urbanization. Here are my agar cups, with substrates inside them (exposed to the stream through a hole cut in the top), in the stream. Since I did this on thursday, the biofilms are hopefully already colonizing them :)

So, thursday was a little stressful because Friday morning were our proposal presentations. 15  minutes speeches plus 5 minutes Q&A. Longest one I have ever done, with the shortest notice. It went well, needless to say we were all glad to be through with it. So Friday was all fun after the proposals were through. We went into town and had celebratory lunch at Cilantros Mexican grill, where one man, took care of every aspect of our meal, taking our order, making our drinks, cooking our food and ringing us up. It was a great lunch. From there, we went out for ice cream and then headed back to the station. Everyone was super tired from going to bed late and waking up early. We had a barbeque planned for that night so a few of us took a nap to get ready. Here's where I slept, the hammock finally went up.

So we had our barbeque, it was delicious and so much fun. All of us REU's, Pedro, and about 8 other PhD students, masters students, research assistants and field technicians. It made for a nice party. Everybody contributed something, we had bourbon chicken, pork&vegetable skewers, potato salad, fruit salad, cookies, garlic bread, HOMEMADE cranberry sauce, beer, and strange anice/coconut shots. It was an enjoyable barbeque in celebration of us finishing our proposals presentations and documents. We stayed up late, someone started to play the guitar, and then the salsa came on and we learned to salsa dance, unsuccessfully.

The next morning, was a day for more field work. I woke up and had to get busy making more agar cups for my experiment. PJ took us to Rio Pieras, and leaving El Verde, we came across a tree in the road that would not let us pass. (Thats where the picture from "meet my REU buddies is from") Well, we called Hilda, the wonder-woman of El Verde and she came down there to check it out. She was going to send for Tony, who does tech work/handy work around the station when this man pulls up in a truck. Hilda said "the only way you's are gonna get outta here without Tony is if this guy has a machete, because sometimes they use them to split these big logs up." Turns out he did! Here he is, saving the day.

Can you believe it?

Once this ordeal was over, I met up with Sofia in Rio Piedras (where the UPR RP is located) to do some work  at the botanical gardens. It is the only green space in the city and wow- is it nice! However, the streams there seem to be the rat hole catch all for everything trashy. It's disgusting, really. You can see for your self, sort of.. but the smell really says it all. Needless to say, this is the high urbanization stream. We wore gloves along with our boots.

After finishing up in the nasty stream, Sofia took me for a walk around the botanical gardens. They are truly beautiful. She showed me so much and gosh. The biodiversity there is insane!! A lot of these plants are exotics brought in from elsewhere for learning purposes but are not invasive in any way. Heres what I saw:

Two different types of Mango tree, the one on the left is a small green variety, the one on the right is a large red variety. 

Mangifera Indica, Mango Tree native to india. See those fruits!? mmmHMM!

We walked along the path and saw so much cool stuff!

We walked along the path and saw so much, it was great. Sofia told me that this was her favorite palce to go in the city, because then it doesn't feel like a city at all. It feels like a quiet park with trails everywhere. She took me down some old trails that did not look like trails at all, to some ponds and beautiful separate gardens from the main circle. There was a medicinal herb garden where we smelt the mature Eucalyptus leaves, the younger ones to not have as great of a scent:

Here, Sofia showed me this fruit, its about as big as a basket ball, I have no idea what it is but she said it was an acquired taste. Would you like one of these to fall on your head?

It smelled very sweet though. 

Here are some of the structures within the gardens. 

This one was next to the medicinal gardens, very picturesque

This was an old Orchid house. It has since been converted and only half the orchids remain. Sofia said the man who used to care for the orchids was a great caretaker of them. 

Window of the orchid house, all the light inside was natural and came from these green barred windows and doors

This is the National flower of Puerto Rico, it looks like a hibiscus but it grows on a large tree.

Here is Sofia with the Monkey's Ear, Genus Enterolobium spp.

This is why it's called Monkey's Ear! Because it looks like a monkeys ear!

These are fern reproductive structures, on a modified leaf, called a fertile frond. The yellow dots are called sporangia. They turn from green to brown when they are "ready".

Here, they are a little darker than in the previous picture. 

This is the Flamboyan Tree, which has beautiful root systems, as you can see! (Later is a photo of the flowering stage-a must see!)

They community garden has it's wall of tools, how cute is that?

Here is another section within the Urban garden, a community garden. See those banana trees in recycled tires? Tropical and adorable. 

Pollination in action! The bee seems to take on the color of the flower.

Here is a banana tree that is not in the urban garden, but free standing in a riparian (next to a river/stream) area. What do you see in the shadows?

Some of the trees in the Botanical Gardens are just massive and beautiful to say the least. 

A security guard found us roaming the grounds and took us on an informational walk, which was nice. He did not speak english but Sofia translated all that he had to offer for me. His& her knowledge of the place together was immense! Here, she is pointing out the soursop tree, called guanábana in spanish.

Here she is again, with the Guanabana, soursop fruit. It produces a sweet white juice that the native like to mix with breakfast meals............or rum. 

Here is the Guava tree! It's so leggy and small, I was surprised. 

And here, is the flowering Flamboyan tree. So beautiful, I see where it gets its' name. 

The botanical gardens were great. My facebook will have a a more broad selection of photos soon. maybe tomorrow but these were my personal picks for the blog. It was a great time. Again, I could not have asked for a better mentor. Sofia is great and I look forward to working with her this summer. Hopefully, tomorrow I will be setting up the last part of our experiment in the mid range urbanization spot, outside of San Juan toward the middle of the island. Before I go, I will be at the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras and that whole day should produce some nice photos of the campus. Look forward to it! We are having movie night tonight on the projector because we have power! We are watching a spelunking movie called The Descent. Should be scary. 

Happy Fathers Day to You Dad, I Love You!! 

(And all the other dads out there)