Botany Test ~Monocots and Dicots~

May 5, 2011

Being the “not so typical school” that we are, when we test we usually end up with something like this:

After reading in our Apologia Science Book “Exploring Creation with Botany”  Lesson 2 ~Seeds~  and learning about monocots and dicots we needed to see if the kids understood what we went over. So out to a hiking trail we went!.

A monocot has a single cotyledon (seed part) like a piece of corn and a dicot has two parts like a bean. If the seed is not present you can look at the leaves to tell; monocots have parallel veins running vertically along the leaf (like grass) and a dicot has the “net” of veins spreading out from the main center vein (like most plants have). Monocot’s flowers usually have petals in sets of threes, where dicots have petals in sets of fours or fives.

“OK we are ready!” I don’t think I have to worry to much about them “freezing up” before a test!

Right away Adam spotted this fluff and shouted, “There is what’s left of a bunny!” Silly boy, I had to tell him that was just thistle fluff, its seeds are attached to that so when the wind blows the seeds are scattered! I could see how he mistook it for bunny fur though!

Both boys found their monocots with their vertical running veins right off. Adam’s being a blade of grass and Austin’s was a small cane stalk. I wanted them to each get a different kind of plant to claim not all of them getting the same. Anna wasn’t as quick so she had a hard time finding one that was different.

Dicots were abundant, with their veined leaves. Austin got this picture mainly for the daddy long legs that was on top of it.

A dragon fly atop a dicot.

An Assassin Bug (probably a nymph) on a dicot leaf..

Anna was chilling with dad.

Can you see the butterfly? Neither did Anna, right after we took this shot she stepped on it. Thankfully it fluttered off only slightly damaged.

Adam always seems to find a way to entertain himself, I believe he was using this dicot leaf as a walky-talky at this point.

This Wild Petunia is a dicot veined leaves and five petals.

This little Cotton Tail wasn’t sure what to think of us taking it’s picture. It was busy eating monocots before we spooked it.

The trail did not have many flowers, so we was disappointed a bit but all the kids passed their test and that was what mattered. After they each spotted a plant to claim as their “test” plant I would walk along and point at a random plants and ask them which kind is this. They did wonderfully each time. Good job kids!!!

Blessings to you,

Becky

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