Group 1: (Adele, Alec, Janaka and Eva)'s Journal

A unique adaptation can be found in the American Mountain Ash. It's berries only grow on the underside of the tree leaves and they are red. This is because they want to be catched by predators so that the seeds can spread and it can reproduce.
One adaptation that all the observations have in common is that they stopped growing or putting new leaves on the side of the plant that faces the trail path. This way they don't waste resources growing where they will be crushed or damaged.
For the birchwood observation, the tree can be classified under the genus birch because of its white bark. It could be tentatively be classified as a grey alder because of the similair physical appearance. We can rule out the classification as a silver birch because that species only exists at high altitudes in Europe and parts of Asia.

The sugar maple tree, “Acer saccharum”, is part of the soapberry family, among the Eudicots. It is a flowering and seed plant, in the group of the vascular plants which are part of the land plants. All our observed species are green plants, which means they are capable of photosynthesis; they convert light energy into chemical energy to fuel their organism’s activity. Moreover, the sugar maple has a unique adaptation; its seeds are shaped with paper-like wings, parallels to each other, that allow them to travel further away, with the help of the wind.

Burdock, or genus Arctium is a vascular plant (phylum) that is invasive to North America. It is part of the family, asteraceae, which is under the order asterales. Since Burdock lie close to the ground beneath large trees that block the sunlight they receive, they have evolved larger leaves, which provide increased surface area to absorb more light energy for photosynthesis. An adaptation common to all the observations is that they are C3 plants. While the C3 pathway leads to photorespiration in hot and dry climates, this is not a significant issue given the sufficient rainfall and moderate temperature of Montreal. It has not been necessary for the plants to evolve an alternative pathway. C3 plants evolved a long time ago when CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere were high and O2 concentrations were too low for photorespiration to be a problem.