Celastrus orbiculatus was NOT FOUNDWe feel like finding some stuff. We see a lot of plants and trees and leaf litter. We hear a lot of noisy kids and we don't really smell much of anything. A lot of what we expected may be invasive, may actually be harmless. There were a lot of suspected invasive species. The time is 12:45 and the weather is cloudy. The air temperature is eleven degrees centigrade. The pond temperature is 7.1 degrees centigrade and the depth is 60 centimeters.
The leaves of our mystery plant was similar to the oriental bittersweet but were not finely toothed, they were gently curved unlike Celestrus Orbiculata. The plant we found has waxy leaves but not exactly like the bittersweet.
Oriental Bittersweet has a smooth green stem ours has a rough red stem. It could have passed for a more mature plant, but the stem was red not brown and woody.
Our mystery plant was not climbing anywhere and there was no evidence that it was going to climb anywhere. There also was not any evidence of berries.
Printer-friendly version
PDF version
Comments
Challenging!
Your group has done some nice work here! It can be challenging to identify some plant species as they change through autumn. One thing that is helpful to consider is how the leaves of the plant leave the stem, oriental bittersweet has alternate leaf arrangement, how about the plant that you found? The shape of leaves can also help us identify plants, were the leaves of the plant you were investigating narrower at the base and wider at their tips?
You use good logic in your written evidence, the stem of your plant looked like it was fairly mature but the plant was not behaving as a vine (climbing some where), which is one of the features of oriental bittersweet that can make it easier to spot. However, sometimes plants and animals do not act the way that we expect them to act. Can you think of any examples of animals or plants not acting as we expect them to (a dog that surfs, a cat that swims, etc.)?
The leaves
I took a look and it seems to me that the leaves sprout in an alternate arrangement. The leaves were generally round, with wavy edges.