Have you ever wondered how plant nurseries manage to grow such beautiful, flourishing plants? It does have something to do with the conditions they are grown in, but just like humans it mainly comes down to genetics. If a plant has good genetics it has a better chance to grow tall and survive longer, but how exactly do you pass on good genes? Unlike fauna, flora cannot seek out a genetically superior partner to breed with, so it has to reproduce for other means. I bring this up for the past 2 months our science class has been learning about the scariest unit you will ever encounter in school; Reproduction. Although we did look at human and other animal examples, we mainly focused on plants. At the beginning I didn’t think it would be that fascinating to learn about flowers and pollen, but then we started to explore something very unique which plants can achieve, which is asexual reproduction. If you want to learn about how you can create a field of dandelions from one plant, then read on!

Our Unit

Our unit began with it’s announcement followed by a chorus of groans from the class. After we had gotten over the shock that we would be learning about “that topic”, we got right into watching a video on human reproduction (followed by more groans). Yet, the video wasn’t really about sexual education, but more about what happens inside the body during the processes of meiosis and mitosis; were the body makes sex cells and begins to create a new organism. This was actually quite fascinating for it followed a pregnancy from a single egg cell to a fully formed human baby. It all starts with the process of meiosis, which is were the gametes (sex cells) are created. It starts with a cell duplicating it’s DNA and splitting the homologous, or similar chromosomes into pairs. This then leads to two nuclei forming and the cell can split into two.

A Video Explaining the Process of Meiosis

These cells then divide and split once again, resulting in four gametes. These will either be sperm or eggs based on the person’s sex, and are produced either before you are born in a female or once puberty occurs in males. Once an egg has been fertilized by a sperm, a baby will begin to grow through the process of mitosis, where a cell duplicates itself to allow the organism to replenish itself. This process applies to all animals, but we soon learned it also applies to plants. We then watched a video which documented the life of a fig tree throughout a year and how the animals around it aided in it’s reproduction, along with how it aided in theirs. This was a great way to remind us how plants help every creature, including humans, and bring us to the next stage of our unit…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vA0xZ3K_0q8

Life’s Greatest Miracle – A Documentary on the Creation of Life

Our Project

As I talked about in the introduction, plants can reproduce in two ways; sexually and asexually. Sexual Reproduction resembles that of a animal, where sperm (usually carried by pollen) is passed into an egg and a new organism grows, but asexual reproduction is quite different. To learn about this, our project (which would be morally ambiguous with anything but a plant) would be to asexually reproduce dandelions, or in other words clone them! To start off, we learned about exactly how vegetative propagation (asexual reproduction of plants) works by looking at worksheets. We learned it is possible for plants can regenerate any of their cells so if you take a part of an already grown plant and replant it, it can grow into a new genetically identical plant. This can be done through a few different procedures, some of which being grafting, cutting, splitting, layering, and budding. For our experiment, we decided to use cutting which involves cutting the plant’s main root into pieces and replanting them.

Our Freshly Potted Dandelions

To start off, we created experiment procedures which outlined what our plans would be. We decided that we wanted to grow our dandelions in a different sized pots to see if it would have an effect, and water them daily. The next thing to do was to go out and get the dandelions. Luckily for us, they aren’t exactly a rare plant and we were able to find some big ones around our school. We then took them back to the lab and cut their roots, planting them quickly after in a indoor growing box. Unfortunately the dandelions did not grow do to a temperature offset in the box, but we were going to have a second chance with another plant of our choice. Our group, which consisted of Melanie, Jamie, Lucas, and I decided that lavender would be a good choice for this because it can grow in hot temperatures without much water. We started off by talking to Melanie’s mom who is a gardener to see what would be the best way to go about this experiment, along with talking to Mr Gross Senior (a retired horticulturist). We gathered that lavender does best in soil with sand in it, and being watered every four days. With this in mind, we used the splitting method (which involves tearing a plant into a desired amount of groups) to plant four lavender pieces in a shoe box.

Planting our Lavender

Unfortunately despite caring for them as best as we could, only one survived until the end of the experiment, which was the biggest clone. However, this did prove that our plants could be cloned so in way it was a success. Since we had achieved this feat, it would make sense to record our process and our class was tasked with making mock research proposal videos for our blogs. In these, we would pretend we were scientists cloning our plants for a specific use, explain the process of asexual and sexual reproduction, and then ask for an amount of money that could theoretically be donated to help us clone them sexually. We started off by writing a script, making sure we included everything listed in the criteria. Next we took videos and pictures of our lavender so we would have evidence of it in it’s prime condition. After that, we split off into our specific filming roles, such as me creating the animation to explain the process of sexual and asexual reproduction. We then presented it in class and were given feedback.

Our Final Video

Reflection

During the course of this unit, I not only learned about how organisms reproduce, but also how important it is that they do. It isn’t enough for an species to just support it’s own generation; it must be able to sustain future generations to create sustainability. This means that a create cannot just reproduce, but must be able to protect it’s offspring one way or another so that the species can carry on. I also learned about the potential benefits that vegetative propagation can have, such as being able to create as many of an identical plant as you need with only one plant. This could have revolutionary benefits in the future is a certain plant is nearing extinction. As for learning about my work habits, I feel that this project was a major step in the right direction for my teamwork. Instead of controlling the project, I decided to step down and let others do equal amounts of the work. This lead to me being less stressed, and the overall project being understood by everyone.

A Reflection Mind Map on our Unit