Elisabet O. Orville
Objectives:
To look at a wide variety of flowers and to decide from their structure how they might be pollinated.
Materials:
There should be plenty of flowers available from vacant lots, trees and gardens by the middle to the end of May. Some of the possibilities are:
-
Wind-pollinated: grasses, plantain, dock, trees mentioned in text.
-
Bee-pollinated: fruit tree blossoms, lilacs, rhododendron, lily-of-the-valley, white clover
-
Bumblebee-pollinated: snapdragon, violets, red clover, butter-and-eggs
-
Butterfly-pollinated: columbine, lilies, phlox
-
Moth-pollinated: bindweed, honeysuckle flowering tobacco, yucca
Instructions to Students:
Examine each flower carefully. Write down the name, how you think it is pollinated and all the reasons for your choice.
There will be a general class discussion after the lab.
Instructions to the Teacher:
The post-lab discussion should emphasize each student’s observations and his reasoning abilities. After a consensus has been reached on the pollinator for each flower, the teacher would ask how these plants and animals have become so well adapted to one another.
Hopefully there will be a discussion of the co-evolution of these organisms.