While assembling my Foldscope, I decided that the best place to start exploring would be my garden in Charleston, SC. The prospect of getting a closer look at the plants that I’ve been looking at my entire life was really quite exciting because while I notice them and appreciate them, I’ve never really looked at them. I also enjoy studying places in which natural and urban places overlap, so studying the plants in my garden in a city nestles nicely into the category of urban ecology.

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To begin, I noticed that on one side of the yard, bricks appeared to be normal man-made objects, with no growth. On the other side, the bricks were unrecognizable, having been completely covered with growth, most likely because there was more shade. Looking at the growth up close shows that there is really a lot going on, as the moss consists of both gametophyte and sporophyte stages of its life cycle.

Grass is the dominant green in most habitats, including my backyard, and cities in general. How does it sustain itself when it is so frequently abused by humans walking on it? In preparing to look at the root structure, what interested me most was how entwined the roots of one blade of grass are with others around it. I wonder if the tight structure is what makes the plant so resilient.

What surprised me as I went about looking at plants and collecting samples was that a high number of the plants are not actually historically native to this region. What was most interesting in fitting certain organisms into the Foldscope were the different patterns that each one consisted of. Certain samples created an incredible display of shapes and colors, better than a work of art.

This species of camellia came from Asia and was first brought to Charleston in 1786. Having been here so long, many people think of this as a local flower. I was excited to snap a picture of the bee in the pollinating process. What I believe to be grains of pollen can be seen in the middle picture as small yellow circles. The flower petal itself was a spectacular kaleidoscope of shades in the pink family.

Wisteria is a climbing vine of the pea family that flowers annually in the spring. Its hardy nature makes many of its species considered to be invasive in the southeastern United States. However, because this individual has never spread out of control, I believe it to be the native Wisteria frutescens ‘Amethyst Falls’ variety. Its seeds grow in pods, from which I took a sample of hairs to look at. Does being fuzzy help protect it from predatory insects? What are the benefit of this over types of pod constructions?

The bark of the palmetto tree was really difficult to get a good sample from for the Foldscope because the needle-like structure is just thick enough for light not to pass through but small enough such that it’s really difficult to shave matter off. So, I decided to look instead at the lichens growing on the tree. Lichens are a composite of algae and fungus living in a symbiotic relationship with each other, and have no effect on the palmetto tree itself.

The peeling bark of a crepe myrtle tree is beautiful because of the contrasting colors between old and new. This feature, in addition to the tree’s flowers and foliage change in the Fall are all reasons that gardeners choose to plant this tree. Why does the tree shed its bark? Is this particular to the crepe myrtle or do all trees do this? It must be beneficial, but I wonder what evolutionary mechanisms led it to do this?

This Japanese Maple tree is another exotic plant. The structural patterns within the leaf are incredible when viewed with the Foldscope. It almost appears as though parts of the leaf are separated from one another; however, I expect this to be the xylem and phloem vascular structures that carry materials throughout the plant.

While I conducted this project as part of Professor Pringle’s EEB321 class at Princeton University, I had a really fun time exploring this unknown world in my own backyard. There is so much yet to be explored as I only looked at a handful of plants (with lichen included), not even touching the animal life. I hope these images gave you a good first look at the ecology present in Charleston and an enhanced perspective on the possibilities of life present in your own backyard, window box, or terrarium.