Hailey's Blog Post #8

Hailey's Blog Post #8

     This year studying the plants at the garden has made me and my team learn, discover and find out a lot about the plants. We found that the shape, size, texture and color make most plants different from one and other.

  This picture is of plant  Number one leaf. As you can see the leaf is very smooth, thick and doesn’t have bugs on it. It’s ruffled mostly along the edges. The color is green with a blue hue. The measurement of the sleeve is 13.3 cm.

      This picture is of plant #2 leave. It is thin and has fuzz/hairs along the stem, underside and top of the lid. Has ruffles along the edges but it’s a dark green. It was 10 cm making it the shortest one we measured.

      This picture is a plant #3 leaf print the Sea sunflower. This plant is also a ruffle but has jagged edges. the leaf is very thin and has hairs along the stem underside and top of the leaf. And has a light green color. Big asleep we measured coming out as 17.8


In conclusion we discord that the leaves were very different like how the leaf from plant number one was smooth and light green color and had a blue hue. But the leaf from plant to was way darker and was smaller and had a hairy texture  also plant number three the sunflower was flat and had jagged edges and  was a light green color and was very big.  this is why my team and I think that the leaves have the most variation.

     This picture is the stem of plant #1. The stem is very brittle and then the end it’s like flimsy and easy to break it’s a very light green color but it doesn’t run straight up the plant and the stem for this plant is measured at 26.2 cm. 

     This is a picture of plant #2. And it’s the plant with the smallest leaves. This plant has a very large stem measured at 1.32 m basically 4 feet and 4 inches. The stem is very firm and hard to break and is light green.  

      This is a picture of plant #3 the sunflower one. Which has the largest leaves and the stem is yellow green. It has sticky long hairs and it’s very hard to bend it. The stem is measured at 1.78 m or 5 feet and 10 inches. The longest of the stems. 

 I think that the size of the stem shows the greatest range of variation with the plants that we looked at. I think this is true because you can see the differences with how flimsy sure or hairy sticky or the stems of the leaves were. Also the stems size showed great range of variation.

 I think the difference in all the plants is a result of different factors. I think what led to the variation in the garden is not part of the process of selective breeding. Selective breeding is artificial selection where humans engineer new organism based off of traits that we want that specific organism to express. I think the result of the variations on these plants is a result of something like more natural and I believe that over time the plants started to slowly change because our plants revolving organisms can very constantly gain new traits that can help them survive in a new environment.  descent with modification is When traits that help them with their new environment are passed down to their offspring. Overtime members of the same species with different adaptations can become so different that they either can't or don't want to mate with each other which is called reproductive isolation this causes them to become separate species. This happened with our Brassica oleracea plants. They aren't 100% the same because of mutations. When their is a mistake in the copying of a DNA sequence, it can cause a mutation. Most mutations don't do anything major to the plant, but some mutations can code for a different amino acid which will create a different protein and can then make some noticeable differences in the phenotype of the organism. All of these things can lead to variation in these plants. 

     

 My team and I learned that the stem color of our plants stayed the most consistent. I think this stayed the most consistent because of the chloroplast in the plants stems making it a light green color. Because all plants that use photosynthesis to turn sunlight energy into natural sugars have to have this green chemical inside their leaves and stems, this gives them their similar green to light green color.

      A main way to get a characteristic or phenotype trait to appear different is through Natural Selection. If the plant or animal doesn't need a specific characteristic, this trait can be changed through Natural Selection. If a plant breeder wanted to get the body part or characteristic of a plant the breeder would need to acquire a Brassica oleracea that expresses that trait and make them have offspring. Eventually after many rounds of breeding the offspring will express the desired trait and you can breed these plants with the other plants that have these same desired traits. They will continue on producing the desired flowers until you or something disrupts the breeding cycle or they mutate and become reproductively isolated.