Nathanael Fessha Lab report

5/15/19
9G

The wildflower project is where we pick and identify flowers. The wildflower project helps us

study genetics, evolution, and ecology outside of class. As well as this this project has put on

display the scientific skills we have used this year, such as ecosystem interactions.Throughout

this project we will also be looking at the cause and effects of nature. I conducted most of my

collecting, either at SSFS, or at my home in Rockville.

My three scientific questions that I have developed while doing this project are, do flowers

grow the most in sunlight, do the flowers have the most variety(different species) in places of

shadiness and do flowers grow the biggest (all in sandy spring) in wet places? In this project I

used many different materials. The materials I used were my Id book (Newcomb’s Wildflower

Guide) a algebra book (for pressing) and one person who helped give me a flower. I also used

paper towels which would go around the flowers. We did this right after we picked them, the

purpose was to dry them.

In the wildflower project I had multiple steps in conducting the study.

My first step was to identify the flower. The way I identified the flower was using the key in the

book and by looking at the flowers petals, leaves, and it’s plant type. Also take a photo of all its

aspects (such as petals) so that when it’s pressed I will know what it looks like before.

My second step the pressing step I would put a paper towel around the flower (usually if it’s wet

to make it dry) and close the book.

The third step was for labeling I would go my teahcer always to make sure that none of my

flowers had incorrect id’s. Also down the line, when we turn in the project, I don’t want to have a

big portion of flowers that were identified incorrectly. Another way I would Id the flowers is by

using the code of petals to leaf type to plant type. I would take my best guess at what the flower

looked like. These are my steps for conducting the study.

 Throughout the wildflower project what I learned is to always keep an eye out for any

flowers. Some mistakes I made was getting flowers that were actually planted so that set me

backwards. I would always focus when I’m looking for flowers and make sure that I at least have

an Id even if it’s wrong. When I did keep a watchful eye out I always found a lot of flowers. I

didn’t learn any new trick that helped me. I dislike how long it took just to find a few flowers. I

enjoyed being out in the outdoors. The first trend in my data is that size varied by location. The

second trend is flowers around a large body of other flowers were smaller than flowers that

weren’t surrounded by other flowers. The third trend is that were there is direct sunlight the

flowers were smaller.

Now that the project is nearly finished I can say that in SSFS flowers don’t grow the most in

one specific area. They are extremely spread out. In SSFS I feel that the flowers in the woods

had the most variety because I picked about eight flowers alone from there. In my opinion, from

what I saw, the flowers grow the biggest behind the baseball field or even further. So I could

answer the questions based on the data collected but they were all in my opinion or at least in

the places I went. Two scientific questions that I would like to answer are why did size vary by

location. The second question is why were flowers under direct sunlight smaller. One scientific

claim that I have is that Sandy Spring has a huge variety of flowers. My data backs this up

because I have 27 different species of wildflowers that I have picked from Sandy Spring.