ANGIOSPERMS

Angiosperms - flowering plants, are both vascular and seed bearing. Their seeds are surrounded by a fleshy fruit. They also have flowers to attract pollinators. The fleshy part of the fruit is payment for the animals that "carry" their seeds to different places. So animals eat the fruits (with the seed inside) and when they poop, they deposit the seed (with fertilizer!) Plants are so smart! Angiosperms are the most diverse group of plants with over 250,000 species. They also live in varying environments and they are all adapted to survive in those environments.

Enjoy the diversity of flowering plants and if you have not thanked a green plant today. . . you need to because without them, we would die!Snowdrops grow out of the snow, they need really cold winters to sprout in the spring literally out of the snow. I tried growing them in my garden, but sadly our winters are not cold enough for them and they never sprout.


Lilly-of-the-valley! One of my favorite flowers, it blooms in the spring around May. The flower is a stem with little bells hanging off. They are very beautiful in a wedding bouquet!



Chrysanthemum. . . I think, it's hard to tell when it's so close up!



I took this picture of these bush flowers all over PLU campus. There are ones with pink flowers and ones with white flowers.

Tulips!

Christmas cactus. . . they bloom around Christmas time. We have a lot of these at home (they're house plants) and they're just amazing when they bloom!

WOW! Look at the colors!

Perfect symmetry in nature!

Lavender

Lilac . . . one of my favorite flowers! I love their smell! I have lilac perfume and I always use it when lilacs are in bloom!



The next five pictures are all of orchids - my all time FAVORITE flowers! Orchids are really amazing . . . even though they're parasites! Some species of orchids are very specific about their pollinators . . . some are species specific where they need a certain species of a certain pollinator. This is very dangerous because if the number of the pollinators decrease, then the orchids would decrease. This could potentially lead to extinction if the number of pollinators fell drastically. Very sad because orchids are sooooo beautiful!!!!!!!!!!

Pansy

Gerbera daisy

Rose

Crocus - another spring flower! First to bloom after snowdrops!

Sunflower - can anyone guess why it's called the "SUNflower"? Very obvious! This picture is really cool!

Tulips!

Tropical flowers . . . don't really know the name. . .

Water lily!

Narcissus! Different from the daffodil because it has multiple flower heads on the same stem.





Close up of a flower's reproductive parts. The Stamen is the male part and the carpel is the female. I can't tell which are which on this picture. . .

Wildflowers!

Poison Ivy

All the different colors are flower colors. It looks like grass, but they are modified flowers that are very short to keep out of the wind.

Poppy!

Hibiscus

Amazing colors! I had this as my desktop background until recently when I changed it to a picture of the yellowing moss. It's like the perfect nature scenery!

Birch - trees are flowers too!

Gerbera daisy

Tulip - up close and personal!

This next section consists of very special plants. . . CARNIVOROUS PLANTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When I said earlier that plants are adapted to all kinds of environments, I wasn't kidding! There's this island in the tropics somewhere where it is surrounded by cliffs, so the water is always flowing down creating the world's biggest waterfalls, but the water also carries away nutrients from the soil that the plants need. The plants in that place have adapted to trap insects for food! It's pretty cool!

Fly trap - catches flies by closing in on them

Sundew. . . looks soooooo cool! BUT all those beads of liquid are very sticky! Insect gets stuck and the flower wraps it up!

Pitcher plants. . . they have this pitfall which is very smooth. . . insects fall down and at the bottom they have a pool of digestive enzymes which break apart the poor insect and use it for food!


How can someone not LOVE flowers after this! I mean seeing the diversity, the adaptation, the genius! You HAVE TO APPRECIATE FLOWERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What I have here is a very, very small part of plants and their diversity. There is much, much more out there to explore and learn!

GYMNOSPERMS

Gynmosperms are vascular seed plants. They differ from angiosperms (flowering plants) in that they have a "naked seed" - meaning it is not surrounded by a fruit. Gymnosperms include phylum Ginkgophyta (Ginko has a very interesting story), phylum Cycadophyta, phylum Gnetophyta and phylum Coniferophyta.


The Ginkgo tree was once thought to be extinct, but then it was found in Tibet - being grown by monks! There is only one living species of Ginkgo and we have a few trees on PLU campus. Apparently, the fruits that are produced by the female trees are very stinky to attract animals to eat them (apparently it does not smell bad to the animals!) and when they were planted at PLU, they took great care not to plant female trees, but there is a female on PLU campus. I have not seen it, but I saw the male ones.

Cycads look like fern trees.

Gnetum of the gnetophytes

Ephedra of the gnetophytes. It's illigal to grow it in the USA because it produces ephedrine - a pain killer. Lots of bad stuff can be made from it.

This is Welwitschia of the gnetophyta. It only produces TWO leaves in it's lifetime and it can grow to great size!



The bottom tree pictures are conifers.

SEEDLESS VASCULAR PLANTS

Seedless vascular plants include the phylum Lycophyta (club mosses, spike mosses, and quillworts) and phylum Pterophyta (true fern, horsetails, and whisk ferns).

Club moss

Spike moss

Spike moss

Ferns

Ferns

Horsetail

Whisk Fern

There is great diversity within these groups. There are 1,200 Lycophytes and 12,000 Pterophytes! That's a lot!

BRYOPHYTES

Bryophytes are non-vascular plants which consist of 3 phyla. Phykum Hepatophyta are the liverworts, phylum Anthocerophyta are the hornworts and phylum bryophyta are the mosses which everyone is most familiar with. These organisms are really interesting. They don't have vascular tissue, but each cell absorbs water and minerals. I could not get hold of pictures of the liwerworts and the hornworts, but here are some mosses. They are really cool! Natural carpet!

Orchestra Concert

Today we had our first concert. I play 2nd violin in the University Symphony Orchestra. It was really amazing1 I love playing in orchestra! It's such an amazing experience! Something that balances my science filled life. We played 2 pieces: one with 4 piano solos! and one symphony. We played Bach's concerto for 4 pianos and it was really great! Can you imagine 4 piano solos and an orchestra accompaniment? It was really great!
We also played Brahms Symphony No. 4. It was really great too. Some wind solos, which were amazing of course! All in all, it was a good night!


My stand partner Hannah and I.


Luke and Erik, my buddies. They walk me home from every practice (I make them - kind of) and they're just cool.




My parents! My mom has not missed a performance yet. My dad always comes when he's home. Today, he came from his trip at 6pm and was at my concert at 8. He's a truck driver, so he's not home all the time.



My dad and I. Do I look like my dad or my mom?

Chemistry is AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was working in the stockroom today (when am I NOT working at the stockroom?) and I was bored and tired. Lillya was working with me, so she started washing dishes and I was siting at the window. We have this cool calendar on the bulletin board next to the window that has all kinds of cool chemistry application stuff on it. This month it was Chinese Lantern Blossoms on the cover and beneath it there was a molecular structure of Physali E, a chemical that is in the flower. it looked REALLY cool. So I got two molecule kits and I started building a 3-D model of this molecule. IT WAS SOOOOOO MUCH FUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT TURNED OUT AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


The red and blue parts are all representing oxygen. I ran out of red, so I used blue too.
The black and gray are all carbons.



It looks even cooler in real life!!!!!!!!


Isn't this amazing??!!!!!!! I LOVE CHEMISTRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After I took apart this molecule, I started building Chlorophyll b, but there are a LOT of double C-C (carbon to carbon) bonds and I didn't have enough double bonds. I didn't want to open another molecule kit, so I just gave up. BUT, in the near future, I WILL build Chlorophyll b.