Moist Evergreen Forest
During the hike at the Lower Fire Trail at the Berkeley hills, I found these organisms to have niches that adapted to their environment.
Western Sword Fern and Bracken Fern were found along the trail where they mainly occupy the space around larger trees( or some dead tree trunk). These ferns generally have very large leaves that are broadly disposed. Due to the relatively high humidity in these moist evergreen forest, they are able to adapt to such niche by growing out large leaves without worrying of loosing too much water to the environment.
The Blewit mushrooms were found at the ground where there are moist layer of soil and dead leaves after the rain on Monday. Hence, these mushrooms grew very large. The biggest one I have found is almost larger than my hand. However, they seemed to have a short life as under the afternoon sun on Tuesday, some of the larger guys exposed to direct sunlight were already wilting and partially dried out. Whereas, those grown in the shades (such as the one I put in the observation) was still fresh as the shades from the above plants provide a room for moisture retention which can be seen as a niche these mushrooms were adapted to in this moist evergreen forest.
Some other shorter plants with large leaves were also found in this site. These plants also adapt themselves to this moist environment by growing out broad leaves to maximize their photosynthesis in places shadowed by larger and talker evergreen trees. With relatively less sunlight exposure due to taller trees, these short plants utilized their leaf size as a niche to better compete with other talker plants in this forest.
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