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Activity 2: A naturalist in North Carolina in 1780*
In this activity, imagine traveling back in time to North Carolina in 1780. You are a naturalist and charged with documenting the tree flora in forests around the state. You begin your task with just a handful of commonly encountered species that you have determined to be oaks (Quercus). These are potentially important to commerce and so must be named and understood taxonomically to facilitate communication about their uses as our fledgling nation builds its economy.
Your task is to identify which species are known to science and which are new. There are no Peterson fieldguides in 1780, so your only resource is Carl Linnaeus' Species Plantarum, published just a few decades ago in 1753.
How will you proceed? Sort the trees you find at each site into morphologically similar groups and develop character profiles for each group at each site. See if you can find at least nine characters that are diagnostic. Aggregegate your profiles from each site. Which characters vary within each population? Which ones are fixed? What does "fixed" even mean?
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