On Tuesday (10/06/2020) I spent around 1 hr and 15 minutes (3:30- 4:43pm) at my sit spot observing my organism. I figured it would be easier for me to figure out what organism it was if I chose one of the things I was already observing, so I chose the plant growing out of the bricks to the right of my sit spot. I identify it as a Common Wild Blue Violet (Viola Sororia). I chose this organism because I was curious of what it was and I was going to need to know what it was if I wanted to keep observing it.

I observed that the violet lived in almost all shade and was visited by tiny, tiny red and brown bugs quite often. Some leaves had small brown spots and some holes and I was curious if it was the tiny bugs making those holes or something bigger. I was curious about this plant because during my last sit spot I was also amazed that the plant was able to grow out of the brick and I was wondering if it had roots that could stretch out from past the brick.

I found out that this plant is a perennial and its grows in low to the ground patches. It grows the best during spring and fall when there are more mild temperatures. I also learned that it liked to grow in shady moist spots, but can grow to be drought tolerant as it gets more mature. I learned that it blooms in May-June, with dark violet, violet, blue or even white flowers.  When researching it, I found out that it also has the ability to adapt to mowing height by growing smaller leaves and shorter stems which is truly amazing to me. In response to my earlier question, I learned that the roots of the violet are fibrous and they have short but thick root systems. It seems that the roots do not spread out past the bricks, but could still be possible that this plant got it’s nutrients and water from under the bricks.

I identified the organism by simply looking up “low growing plant with heart-shaped leaves” The first few searches looked nothing like the plant, so I changed the “plant” to “weed” and it was a weed! It was fun finding about the other plants however, several other similar plants/weeds like Garlic Mustard popped up. I was also slightly surprised to find out that it was a weed and not an actual plants because it was growing with no other plants near it, but in hindsight, that just means less competition for the violet. It was surprsingly not at all challenging to find this weed.

This experience was extremely fun for me. I was curious about this plant from the beginning and really wanted to know what it was because it also grew in my lawn back home in Herndon.  I never really had enough curiousity to research it by myself but now that I have I’m glad I did! Observing the plant and noticing all the little bugs that visisted it and noticing the particular shape of the leaves was interesting to me. I never knew how much you could learn about one thing just by observing it for 30 mins. Of course, I didn’t spend the entire hour at my sit spot observing the plant since I still wanted to disconnect for quite a while and observe the other two things I chose. All in all, this was a fun experience and I would love to learn more about this weed.