Phytophagy is the act of consuming plants. This can be done in many ways and evidence of this is all around us. Right here on campus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, phytophagy is present in the form of insects consuming leaves. On a warm sunny day in fall around 4:00pm on a Friday I left the BCRC room in Morrill Science Center III south by taking a right down the hallway. At the end of the hallway I took a left and then entered a large door into a stair well. Through the big heavy door, there is the stair well that has the walls painted with various themes of science. I began descending the stairs. I walked to the very bottom of the stair well and opened the door to a new hallway where I took a left. I went through a set of doors, down a short set of stairs and through the last set of doors finally stepping outside. I walked down the side walk to the left. I saw a small set of stairs on my right about 40 feet from the door I just exited; leading me to a crosswalk at the bottom. I then went down those stairs. I crossed the crosswalk located at the bottom of the stairs. I was sure to look both ways before crossing the street and made sure no cars where coming. Once across the street I walked across the east lawn heading in the direction of the library tower. At the edge of the campus pond there are two granite benches. The bench on the left is located between two trees. The tree on the right in-between the two benches has a small shoot growing from the base of the adult tree. This shoot is located on the side of the tree closest to the Morrill Science Center buildings. Halfway up this shoot is a leaf that has three large wholes in the center of the leaf almost in a clover shape. It also has two smaller holes towards the apex of the leaf one on each side of the main venation of the leaf. On the left side of the leaf there is a series of holes in what looks like a “cancer ribbon” shape. In my left hand I held the leaf and a ruler on the inches side to show that the leaf is approximately 2 inches long which is approximately 5 centimeters. I held the leaf and measured it with the stem to the left and the apex to the right. I took the picture with my phone.
Comments
Nomenclature/factors
Consider using more landmarks that could be more obvious. For example, someone following these methods outside of UMass, or even the Biology department, would not understand what the BCRC is, but they might recognize North Pleasant St.
reply
This is good! I think you can make it flow a little better but it can be tricky with this assignment. I think this could have the potential to be a great paragraph, if you work on sentence structure and flow!
typo
no cars "were" coming
I feel like the first two
I feel like the first two sentences describing phytophagy would be more fitting for an introduction section rather than methods, where the purpose is to explain what you did