Week 9—A Big Push

This week, I really focused on getting as much of the trail mapped out as possible, and ensuring my map could be widely applicable to vast swaths of the park. I heavily relied on the Seek App, which helps me identify new plants along the trail. Since I was rapidly moving through many different sites, I used it to help me identify brand new tree species, like the Box Elder, and the and the White Alder tree. I got to see some fully mature valley oaks, and they are some of the most magnificent trees in the park. Seek helped me make sure I didn’t misidentify them as Walnuts. At the same time, Seek helped me correct some errors of mine. Arroyo willows and red willows look very similar, and they can be hard to tell apart with the naked eye. I thought I was identifying them correctly, but this week I used seek to check and found out I’d made a mistake. Luckily, my mistake was confined to one restoration site, so I was quickly able to fix it.

I talked a lot with my External Advisor about her recommendations for the descriptions and what to include on each pin. I will be describing some common features and characteristics of each plant, like how much water they need, as well as how fast they grow. My External Advisor once again recommended Calfora and Calscape to gather more information for the plants for my description. She told me that these resources also include fun facts about the trees, like the ones that I used in my past blogs highlighting specific tree species. I’m going to try to highlight which plants have edible components (while still providing a disclaimer not to directly consume plant material from the park). Finally, my blog will be listing some common, trusted nurseries relied upon by the city at the top of my map. This way, the city isn’t playing favorites to any particular nursery, and viewers of my map have wide-ranging choice.

I’ve made some progress in finding out how I will be promoting my map. I will first convert the Google MyMap to a QR code. I have found some stickers online that allow for a custom QR code and a message. I will be using these, and they are about 2 inches in diameter. These convenient stickers are perfect for the park, because they can easily be replaced. They aren’t too big, so they can go on existing signage without covering anything else up. I’m beginning to wind down the project, and will be finalizing everything by the end of next week. So, I’m working through the weekend as well. See you next week for hopefully a good final product!

Here’s a picture of a mature blue elder flowering, a recent but significant plant that has begun flowering at Sabercat: