Post 5

On Thursday we took a field trip to Lover's Key State Park. It was nice having class at the beach for sure, but I also did learn and was able to explore with my friend Kelsey. The area is roughly 293 square miles and called an estuary environment. Learned about the different kinds of mangroves. Red mangrove the roots look like hands or walking trees. Black mangrove have roots that look like fingers sticking out of the ground. White mangrove roots look like trees with no special roots. If you were to plant any other tree in this environment it wouldn't survive. Most tress are not able to survive in salt environment. The mangroves collect the salt through the roots and use fresh water to then excrete the salt. Most trees have seeds but the mangrove has something that is called a propugle which is a seed attached with nutrients that is free standing and wiggle its way and plant itself. We saw some wildlife such as an osprey and a seagull. There was a plethora of shells and also we found sand dollars, starfish and hermit crabs. We take for granted living in Florida. There is so much out there to be explored. I enjoyed this field trip. We should have class at the beach every class period.