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Wildflowers Concepts: Different plant species need different amounts of sunlight and water. Each plant is adapted to live in a different habitat under different conditions. Objectives: The students will demonstrate knowledge of the parts of a flower. The students will be able to identify at least three wildflowers common to Indiana. The students will name the medicinal or culinary use of a common wildflower or tell a story about a plant identified in the field. The student will survey a plot for wildflowers and make inferences about the needs of the plants living in that plot for sunlight and water based on soil and light conditions. Equipment: Straws Yellow blocks Cups Flower Model kit Crayons/colored pencils Plot survey worksheet Peterson’s first wildflower guide Jeweler’s loupes Pencil Flower Bingo Sheets Paper Note to Teacher: Be sure to check both the common and scientific names of each plant and use a good field guide in your research. Be aware that different flowers will be in bloom at different times during the season. Check charts at the end of this lesson for a list of species common to Bradford Woods with approximate blooming times. Time: 1 hour, 50 minutes Activities in Lesson: Wildflower Bingo (20 min) Drawing a Flower (25 min) Flower Identification (15 min) Plant Needs Relay (20 min) Plot Survey (30 min) Vocabulary Adaptation- any beneficial alteration in an organism resulting from natural selection by which the organism survives and multiplies in its environment. Anther- the pollen-bearing part of the stamen. Disturbed- an area that has been changed from a pristine state due to activity. Edge- the area that separates two distinct ecosystems. Leaf– a usually green, flattened, lateral structure attached to a stem and functioning as a principal organ of photosynthesis and transpiration in most plants. Native- an original inhabitant or species of an area or ecosystem. Non-native- not an original inhabitant or species of an area or ecosystem. Petal- one of the often brightly colored parts of a flower immediately surrounding the reproductive organs; a division of the corolla. Pistil- the central set of female reproductive organs in a flower. The pistil is composed of one or more carpels and produces the ovule. Pollen- the male reproductive cell of flowering plants and conebearing plants. Pollen grains are produced in the anther of a flower. Sepal- small leaves located directly under a flower; the outermost part of a flower. Collectively, the sepals are called the calyx. Stamen- the male reproductive parts of a flower. It consists of the filament and the anther, which produces pollen. Undisturbed- an area that has not been changed from a pristine state due to activity. 177 Wildflowers Wildflower BINGO (20 min) Materials: bingo cards, pencils. 1. Begin by asking the students: Who can name a wildflower? What does it mean to be a wildflower? How are wildflowers different from flowers you buy in the store? 2. Explain to the students that they will be studying wildflowers at Bradford Woods. The goal of today is for them to be able to identify several different wildflowers by name and identify the parts of the plant. 3. Divide the students into pairs or small groups. Tell the students they will be playing the Wildflower Bingo as they walk. Hand out a bingo card to each group. Each group should try to complete as much of the Bingo card as possible before reaching the next location. 4. Instruct the students not to pick any plants or flowers. Be sure to move at a pace that will allow students to complete their bingo card. Upon arrival, review what the students found. Students may or may not be able to get bingo or complete their Bingo card depending upon the season and the location to which you are traveling. Ask the students why they may or may not have found some of the items on the cards. Drawing a Flower (25 min) Materials: paper, colored pencil, jewelers loupe, flower model 1. Divide the students into pairs or small groups. Have each group choose a live flowering plant to draw in detail. Ask the student to make a detailed drawing that includes all the parts of the plant visible above the soil. Ask the students to take great care in drawing the shape of leaves and petals. The students may touch the plant and gently move the petals aside, if necessary, to see inside the flower. Remind the students not to pull the flowers apart or out of the ground. **Note: Make sure the plants students are handling are not harmful to touch.** 2. As the students draw their plants, they should label all the parts they know (i.e. leaves, stem, petals, pistil, stamen etc.). This will give you an idea of how much the students know about the names of the plant and flower parts. When the students finish their drawings, use a flower model to review the parts of a flower and the functions of each part. Nominate one student to hold the parts of the model together as you ask the students to name a part of the plant and describe the function of that part. Work with as a large group to describe the following: Roots: absorb nutrients and water from the soil. Stem: transports water, food and nutrients throughout the plant. Leaves: manufacture food (sugar) for the plant to grow. Petals: attract insects to plant to help in pollination. Pistil: holds sweet nectar that the insects collect for food and, after pollination, becomes the seed. Stamen: holds the anther which produces the plant’s pollen. Sepal: the leaf-like structures just below the petals that are the remnants of the flower’s bud state. Flower Identification (15 min) Materials: wildflower field guide. 1. Allow the students to use a field guide to identify the flower they just drew. Explain the three key characteristics to which they will need to pay attention in using the Peterson’s First Field guides: Petal color: The guides are arranged by petal color. The students must determine the color of their flower’s petals and then turn to the section in the book with the matching color in the upper right-hand corner of the page. Flower shape: Next the students need to match the shape of their flower with the flower shapes in the book. They may decide that their flower is open like a daisy, bellshaped, cup-shaped or that their flower has many tiny blooms that form an umbrella. Leaf shape: Finally the students will need to look closely at the shape of their leaves and match the leaf shape of their flower with the shape of the leaves in the book. Some leaves will be short with jagged edges, long with smooth edges, wide like a hand, or narrow like grass. 178 Wildflowers 2. Hand out one field guide per group. Once the students have identified their flower, have them try to identify a flower in a different area. After they have identified a few flowers, have them determine what the plants need to survive. They should look around the habitat in which the flower is found to answer the question. Plant Needs Relay (20 min) Materials: straws, cups, yellow blocks 1. Ask the students to name three things all plants need to make food and grow. Plants need air, sunlight, and water to make sugar. The sugar is transported throughout the plant to provide energy for growth. The students may also name good soil or nutrients as one of the things a plant needs to grow. 2. Explain to the students that they will be playing a game in which they will be split into groups. Each group will represent one plant. Each plant will need to obtain air (represented by straws), water (represented by cups), and sunlight (represented by yellow blocks). When a plant has one sunlight, air, and water (or one block, cup, and straw), then, the plant was able to make one sugar. Each team will send one person at a time to collect one item at a time. On his or her turn, a student may collect any one item he or she wishes. The objective of the game is for each plant to make as much sugar, or as many groups of three, as possible. Emphasize that the game is like a relay race and that the students may only go one at a time and come back with one item. 3. Have the students line up in their teams at one end of the playing area and place the cups, straws and blocks at the other end of the playing area in three separate piles. Play the first round with an equal number of items (approximately 30-35 of each item for a group of 14). Play ends when all the pieces have been picked up. A plant, each group of students, survives if it has at least five sugars. Each group should be able to survive this round. 4. Play a second round, but remove about half of the cups (water). At the end of the round, ask the students why some plants did not survive and ask the students to think of a situation in which a plant may not be able to obtain enough water. The students may name drought as a possibility. Ask the students what they think might happen to a plant if another plant growing beside it needs more water from the soil. 5. Play a third round, but remove about half the blocks for sunlight. This time some plants will not survive because they could not obtain enough light. At the end of the round, ask the students which of the three items they were short and have them describe a situation in which a plant might not be able to receive enough sunlight. A taller plant growing nearby or a building might cast a shadow and block the sunlight. Plot Survey (30 min) Materials: plot survey sheets, pencil 1. This is a guided exploration activity using the plot survey sheet at the end of this lesson. Divide the students into pairs or small groups. Distribute a Plot Survey sheet and pencil to each group. Assign each group of students to a small plot in an edge area or on the forest floor (in the spring). If possible, try to assign each group to a different type of area, sunny or shady, at the top of a ridge in drier, sandier soil or at the bottom of a ravine in more moist, claylike soil. Allow the students to complete the information on the worksheet. 2. When all the groups have completed their sheets, sit the trail group in a circle and allow each group to share the data, predictions and inferences from their worksheet. The students should conclude that plants growing in a sunny area need more sunlight than plants growing in a shady area, and that plants growing on ridge tops probably need less water than plants growing at the bottom of a hill (as water flows downhill). 3. Give each group a copy of the Peterson’s First Wildflower guide. Allow them to look up the real name of the flower. Depending on what has been found tell the students a bit of folklore about each of the plants they have found. If time allows, ask the students to use the wildflower guides to identify several more flowers in the area. 179 Wildflowers Evaluation: √ √ √ √ Notes: Students can name the parts of a flower. Students can identify at least three wildflowers common to Indiana. Name the medicinal or culinary use of a common wildflower Students can make inferences about soil, light and water needs of the plants living in a specific plot. Keep in Mind: As with wild edibles, it is critical for the teacher to be familiar with at least a few of the wildflowers in bloom at Bradford Woods. Take time to hike the route you plan to walk ahead of time and note the location of at least three to five species. Back in the Classroom Investigate the extent to which Purple Loosestrife has been found in your community. Locate guides to properly identify Purple Loosestrife and investigate local wetlands to see if you can locate the plant. Find out what is being done in your community or state to face the issue of the Loosestrife invasion. Find out if there are businesses in your community that are selling the plant and write to them, informing them about what the plant does to wetlands. Investigate other non-native species of plants and learn how they got to the United States. What methods are being used to control the spread of those plants? 180 Background Wild Flowers Spring and summer in many forests bring an array of wildflowers. These flowers, like other plants in the forest, are facing a number of issues. Development of land is reducing the amount of growing space. Many flowers are not easily transplanted and will not survive when moved. Another issue a wildflower faces is people picking and collecting it. The flowers are not allowed to go to seed, so the next generation is never planted. A third issue, and one growing in severity, is the introduction and proliferation of non-native, or exotic plants. These alien species frequently can out compete the native ones. An example would be Purple Loosestrife. Purple Loosestrife was brought to the United States in the early 1800's in the ballast of a ship that crossed the ocean from Europe. The perennial was used as a medicinal plant and promoted, by beekeepers, as an excellent source of nectar. Purple Loosestrife has spread to virtually every state in the United States and into all the Canadian provinces that border the United States. This plant has had no natural predators, allowing it to grow unhampered. It grows in wetlands and chokes out native species. The loss of native species to an area causes the wetland to become unsuitable habitat for waterfowl and other aquatic species. A mature Purple Loosestrife plant can grow to be 6-10 feet tall and each plant may have 30-50 square stems. It is estimated that a mature plant can produce over two million seeds annually. The seeds have the ability to remain in the soil for a number of years. When the soil is disrupted and the seeds are brought to the surface, the plants will grow. Ditches alongside roads often provide an attractive habitat for Purple Loosestrife. These ditches often connect loosestrife-intensive areas with natural, undisturbed areas and continue the spread of the plant. Seedling densities can reach 10,00020,000 plants per square meter. In irrigation channels with a dense establishment of plants, the flow of water can be blocked. at Bradford Woods will have a sticky clay-like texture. To simplify things, we recognize three main types of soil categories. The soil found along the tops of our deep ravines generally is slightly dry and sandy. Soil along the steep hillsides erodes quickly due to water erosion. Finally, the soil in low-lying areas at the bottom of the ravines is much more moist due to the run-off from the hillsides. While some species growing at Bradford Woods will grow in any of these locations, you will find others that seem to prefer growing in only one or two of these areas. Early to late spring is the perfect time to view many native forest wildflower species. These flowers cover the forest floor where the soil is relatively undisturbed by human activity. In the summer to early fall, the edge areas between the forest and the road sides or the forest and lawn areas will be filled with many blooming plants. In general, these areas, especially near the roads, have experienced a great deal of human disturbance and tend to be rocky and less nutrient rich. You will find many plants both native to Indiana and non-native growing in these areas. Whether native or not, these plants all have a greater tolerance for this type of soil. Flowers and Sunlight Plants manufacture their own food in their leaves through the process of photosynthesis. Sunlight is the key ingredient in this process. Some plants prefer an abundance of sunlight. While others are able to grow under greater or lesser degrees of partial shade. Many forest flowers of the early spring have a very low tolerance for shade. These plants sprout, bloom and go to seed before the trees leaf out in late April to early May, which dramatically reduce the supply of sunlight to the forest floor. The wildflowers growing along the roadsides and in other edge-areas have a tolerance for shade, but cannot grow in the dense shade created by the forest canopy. Flowers and Soil The Bradford Woods property is composed of over twenty distinct soil types. Each type of soil will hold water differently and support a different variety of plants. Overall, the soil in any location 181 Background Spring Edition Toothed Leaf Dandelions Pistil Trout Lilly Stem Violets Sepal Spring Beauty Anther May Apple Pollen Spring Cress Toothwort Jack in the Pulpit Stamen Petals 182 Background Fall Edition Toothed Leaf Dandelions Pistil Snakeroot Goldenrod Ironweed Sepal Anther Sun flowers Pollen Mints Petals Asters Joe Pye Weed Stamen Stem 183 Background Wildflower Plot Survey Date: ____________________________________________________________________________ Plot Size: ________________________________________________________________________ Location of Plot: __________________________________________________________________ Amount of Sun the Plot Receives: ___________________________________________________ Soil Type: _______________________________________________________________________ Amount of Water the Plot Receives: _________________________________________________ Total Number of Plants: ___________________________________________________________ Specific Plants Found: ____________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________ Any signs of animals in the plot? If yes, what kind? ________________________________________________________________________________ Comments and other Observations: _________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________ Illustrate any significant plants and also indicate any differences in terrain and sunlight. 184 Standards Grade 3 English/ Language Arts 3.7.3 Answer questions completely and appropriately. 3.7.15 Follow three- and four-step oral directions. Mathematics 3.1.1 Count, read, and write whole numbers up to 1,000. 3.6.1 Analyze problems by identifying relationships, telling relevant from irrelevant information, sequencing and prioritizing information, and observing patterns. Science 3.2.6 Make sketches and write descriptions to aid in explaining procedures or ideas. 3.4.1 Demonstrate that a great variety of living things can be sorted into groups in many ways using various features, such as how they look, where they live, and how they act, to decide which things belong to which group. 3.4.8 Explain that some things people take into their bodies from the environment can hurt them and give examples of such things. 3.5.5 Explain that one way to make sense of something is to think of how it relates to something more familiar. Social Studies 3.3.7 Physical Systems: Describe how climate and the physical characteristics of a region affect the vegetation and animal life living there. 3.3.9 Human Systems: Identify factors the make the region unique, including cultural diversity, industry, the arts and architecture. 3.3.11 Environment and Society: Identify and describe the relationship between human systems and physical systems and the impact they have on each other. Grade 4 English/Language Arts 4.7.1 Ask thoughtful questions and respond orally to relevant questions with appropriate elaboration. Mathematics 4.1.1 Read and write whole numbers up to 1,000,000. 4.2.1 Understand and use standard algorithms* for addition and subtraction. 4.2.2 Represent as multiplication any situation involving repeated addition. 4.2.4 Demonstrate mastery of the multiplication tables for numbers between 1 and 10 and of the corresponding division facts. 4.2.11 Know and use strategies for estimating results of any whole-number computations. 4.2.12 Use mental arithmetic to add or subtract numbers rounded to hundreds or thousands. 4.5.1 Measure length to the nearest quarter-inch, eighth-inch, and millimeter. 4.5.6 Understand that rectangles with the same area can have different perimeters and that rectangles with the same perimeter can have different areas. 4.7.3 Apply strategies and results from simpler problems to solve more complex problems. 4.7.4 Use a variety of methods, such as words, numbers, symbols, charts, graphs, tables, diagrams, tools, and models to solve problems, justify arguments, and make conjectures. Science 4.2.4 Use numerical data to describe and compare objects and events. 4.2.5 Write descriptions of investigations, using observations and other evidence as support for explanations. 4.2.6 Support statements with facts found in print and electronic media, identify the sources used, and expect others to do the same. 4.4.4 Observe and describe that some source of energy is needed for all organisms to stay alive and grow. 4.4.5 Observe and explain that most plants produce far more seeds than those that actually grow into new plants. Grade 5 English/Language Arts 5.7.1 Ask questions that seek information not already discussed. 5.7.2 Interpret a speaker’s verbal and nonverbal messages, purposes, and perspectives. 5.7.3 Make inferences or draw conclusions based on an oral report. Mathematics 5.1.4 Interpret percents as a part of a hundred. Find decimal and percent equivalents for common fractions and explain why they represent the same value. 5.1.5 Explain different interpretations of fractions: as parts of a whole, parts of a set, and division of whole numbers by whole numbers. 5.6.1 Explain which types of displays are appropriate for various sets of data. 5.7.3 Apply strategies and results from simpler problems to solve more complex problems. 5.7.4 Express solutions clearly and logically by using the appropriate mathematical terms and notation. Support solutions with evidence in both verbal and symbolic work. 185 Standards Science 5.2.1 Multiply and divide whole numbers mentally, on paper, and with a calculator. 5.2.4 Keep a notebook to record observations and be able to distinguish inferences from actual observations. 5.4.4 Explain that in any particular environment, some kinds of plants and animals survive well, some do not survive as well, and some cannot survive at all. 5.4.7 Explain that living things, such as plants and animals, differ in their characteristics, and that sometimes these differences can give members of these groups (plants and animals) an advantage in surviving and reproducing. 6.4.10 Describe how life on Earth depends on energy from the sun. Social Studies 6.1.19 Analyze cause-and-effect relationships, keeping in mind multiple causation, including the importance of individuals, ideas, human interests, beliefs, and chance in history. Grade 6 English/Language Arts 6.5.7 Write for different purposes and to a specific audience or person, adjusting tone and style as necessary. 6.7.3 Restate and carry out multiple-step oral instructions and directions. Mathematics 6.2.6 Interpret and use ratios to show the relative sizes of two quantities. Use the notations: a/b, a to b, a:b. 6.5.1 Select and apply appropriate standard units and tools to measure length, area, volume, weight, time, temperature, and the size of angles. 6.5.3 Understand and use larger units for measuring area by comparing acres and square miles to square yards and square kilometers to square meters. Science 6.2.7 Locate information in reference books, back issues of magazines and newspapers, compact disks, and computer databases. 6.4.1 Explain that one of the most general distinctions among organisms is between green plants, which use sunlight to make their own food, and animals, which consume energy rich foods. 6.4.3 Describe some of the great variety of body plans and internal structures animals and plants have that contribute to their being able to make or find food and reproduce. 6.4.8 Explain that in all environments, such as freshwater, marine, forest, desert, grassland, mountain, and others, organisms with similar needs may compete with one another for resources, including food, space, water, air, and shelter. In any environment, the growth and survival of organisms depend on the physical conditions. 186