La Universidad de Las Islas Baleares

Yesterday I met with Professor Maurici Mus, a botanist at the University of the Balearic Islands. He was very helpful to me by showing me various books that I could purchase to help with my lichens project and to identify plant species on Mallorca and providing me with contact info for other botanists in the area. He also offered up the use of the microscopes and other resources in the botany lab whenever I needed them.

It was really great going there because the botany department here reminded me so much of the botany department back home at Humboldt. It was crowded with full pictures of plants, potted plants, and microscopes. I don't know what I was expecting, but it made me feel happy to see how similar things can be even if they are across the world.

Check out the Virtual Herbarium!

East Side of the Island

Here are a few botanical pictures from the east side of Mallorca, where I went this last weekend. I am meeting with a botany professor tomorrow so hopefully I will get some books on the flora of the island so I can give more details about what these pictures are of.

There were tons of these tiny little palms everywhere! They are called palmitos (Chamaerops humilis) and they are native to Mallorca.

Smilax aspera ssp. balearica

Lots of beautiful Araceae leaves popping up everywhere..

Some wild rosemary...

Fruticose lichens!

There are large patches of this orange lichen all over the place at the beach called Cala Varquez.

This hillside will be gorgeous in the spring with all those flower stalks covered in some kind of Lilliaceous flowers

I promise the next post will be way more descriptive!

Mallorca

I have been living in Palma de Mallorca for the last 2 and a half weeks and I will continue to be living here until the end of May. Mallorca is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and thus has a Mediterranean climate.

I am living in a city of 400,000 people so the majority of the plants I have seen are cultivars planted around the city like palms, many tropical species, olive trees, and various shrubs.

I was able to go hiking about a half hour north-east of the city near a town called Valldemosa in a very rocky, semi-arid landscape. The landscape was mainly dominated by a species of 2 needle Pinus and a couple differentQuercus species. There was an abundance of lichens and mosses, and I also spotted a few ferns. Unfortunately October is not really the best time to look for flowers but there were some representatives from the Asteraceae and Scrophulariaceae (if it still existed).

Here are a few pictures of what I have been talking about:

The view of the sea from a point on my Valldemosa hike

A very cute moss I saw saw frequently with very long, silvery awns

These orange crustose-foliose epilithic lichens are everywhere in the city of Palma. Maybe a nitrogen loving species like Xanthoria?

And here is a fine specimen of Olea europaea, or olive, that was growing in Palma.

I saw plenty of cubical brown rot on my hike but no mushroom fruiting bodies to check out. Once it starts raining, hopefully that will change.

I also hope to go visit a few botany professors at the University of the Balearic Islands to borrow some books so I can start keying species out!