Plant Science 5: Plant Adaptations (The Fernery and more)

Our continued adventures at the Botanic Gardens.




Outside the greenhouses....







The fountain.

Seeds from the trees

And inside the greenhouses:

A giant citrus fruit.

The fernery:

Ferns, close up.

Just look at this amazing flower.

Ds1 said it reminded him of that really stinky jungle flower that only flowers once every hundred years. Thankfully this one didn't stink!

Plant Science 4: Plant Adaptations (The Palm House and the Lily House)

More photos from our outing to The Botanic Gardens. This time the palm house and lily house.

This bark reminds me of pregnant bellies.

Ooo...these pitcher plant thingymagigs are so cool. Big green pee pots on twisty stems.

Bananas.

The lily pond:

And this is how the pond looks later in the year with the giant lilies:

Plant Science 3: Plant Adaptations (Desert Plants)

It's easy to forget the wonderful resources you have on your doorstep. After watching a few of the online BBC clips about plant adaptations it seems only natural to head off to our local Botanic Gardens.


It might be half-term but the miserable weather keeps the hoards of school kids at bay. It's only us mad folks who venture out to a garden in weather like this.



Photos from the 'Arid House'. No titles required, just an opportunity to marvel at the wonders of the plant world.

Plant Science 2: photosynthesis and chlorophyll (my pestle and mortar will never be the same again)

We love those Dorling Kindersley 'How xxxx works'. Even the maths one is great, though I have to confess it's better to read than to attempt any of the maths hands-on things which seem to require a huge amount of preparation.

This is a page out of the plant section of 'How Nature Works'. The experiment to separate out the pigments in plants looks cool, so we decide to give it a bash.




Literally.



We try several different sorts of plant 'matter'.




Mashed and dissolved (apparently, though ours was more a lumpy mush) in acetone. [May I note here that I actually had to go and buy nail varnish remover. 'Oh I've got some of that' I say. Only to find that the only bottle of nail varnish remover I possess states in large letters on the front 'ACETONE-FREE NAIL VARNISH REMOVER'. Great.]

I would show you the finished blotting paper chromatograms except that they didn't look very good. At all. Nope. They just looked like very pale - almost coloured - damp strips of blotting paper.

So you might as well just look at the ones in the 'How Nature Works' book.

Like all good scientists we looked at why the experiment didn't work.

Our conclusions:

1. We got bored mashing and should have used the liquidizer instead but that would have involved getting a load of plant material and we couldn't be bothered.

2. See 1.