
North Country explorer from Plainfield, Vermont
St. Lawrence students in the Sustainable Communications class joined Nature Up North on campus to learn tree identification and to start collecting data for the Monitor My Maple citizen science project. After a tour of the four maple species found on the St. Lawrence campus - sugar, red, silver and norway - they jumped into data collection, pairing up and exploring campus trees on their own. While clearly still suffering from the recent tent caterpillar outbreak, maple trees near the SLU fitness center are bursting with seeds and already starting to change color! For an added bonus, the group spotted a gray tree frog (Hyla versicolor) near the crosswalk.
Learning to identify various species of maple trees.
Students practice collecting data for Monitor My Maple.
The group was excited to see so many fruits (seeds) on campus maple trees. These fruits are on a Norway Maple (Acer platanoides).
Students spied this Gray Treefrog (Hyla versicolor) near a campus crosswalk. They can present as green or gray, and are often seen blending into tree trunks - this was an unusual sight!