Integrated Learning-Living Communities

After an initial organizational meeting featuring Ben & Jerry’s cones, the BEES embarked on their first official BEES outing, a tree identification tour of Woodland Cemetery, a graveyard adjacent to the University of Dayton campus built on mounds of glacial till deposited at the end of the last (Wisconsin) glaciation.   

This walk allowed students to get up close and personal with an entirely different type of cones, the spawn of white pines as well as Norway and blue spruces (nativeto Ohio). The arboretum is replete with many indigenous species, where native speaks to their arrival before the Europeans. 

Other notable native trees in Woodland include sycamores (the American cousin of European plane trees, famous for their ability to absorb urban air pollution), American basswoods (lindens), black walnuts, yellow or tulip poplars, catalpas, sweetgums and maples. The indigenous red and white oaks (pointed versus rounded leaves) were conspicuous for their array of acorns, but the (fewer on the ground) buckeyes were a bigger hit, probably because Winan’s famous chocolate and peanut butter buckeye mounds were provided as a snack at the end.

One conspicuous later arrival — although not classified as invasive — was the Japanese ginkgo, introduced en masse by the National Cash Register company. Its fruit can be quite unpleasant in odor. 

The tour also included a visit to the gravesites of Wilbur and Orville Wright, as well as that of the African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (whose first book of poetry was published by the Wright brothers, printers before they redirected their talents to bikes and planes). This enabled those on tour to earn their first ‘stamp’ toward the eight required by the Aviation Trail to earn a Wilbear (a small teddy bear).