Class Session # 2

My head's spinning..... a whole day of plant anatomy, ID and botanical classifications......got a whole pile of new words to add to my vocabulary:  scions, parenchyma, tepals, dioecius, involucre, monoecious, cymes, capitula, actinomorphic, zygomorphic, capitulum, hypanthium, monadelphus, connivent, silique, silicle, umbel, schizocarp, and here's a doozy... poricidal dehiscence.... try saying that fast 5 times.  Not to mention all the latin names...... don't even go there!   Suffice to say, if I ever remember any of these words I'm going to be one mean, lean Scrabble-winning machine next time I play, so watch out! 

The instructor, Dr. David Deardorff (http://www.ddandkw.com/) did a super job of keeping things moving along, making things interesting and actually teaching us something that could easily become desperately boring or over-the-top confusing.    To help us understand how to identify a plant using the "key" system we were given three different plants:  a carnation, a daisy and a lily and by carefully examining the flower (literally taking it apart piece by piece) and following the "key" system we were able to figure out which family the plant belonged to - and the answer is, caryophyllaceae, asteraceae and liliaceae families respectively.  If you're familiar with "if-then" statements well that's sort of what the key system is like....  you start with a high level feature, say the petals, and then if the petals look like this, then go this way through the key, but if the petals look like that, then go that way.  At the next level, you take the next feature of the flower, say the ovary, and repeat the process... if the ovary is superior go this way, if it's inferior go that.... and so on, step by step working through the "ladder" of options until you dead end at the family name.   Kinda cool how it works.... in principal pretty logical, but in reality easy to get totally lost.  Flowers are not simple constructs..... we learned that big time today.  They are amazingly varied, intricate, and sometimes deceivingly complex.... a true marvel of mother nature.  I don't think I'll ever look at a flower the same way again.....

I had a chance to talk to Dr. Deardorff during one of the breaks and got my botanical classification questions answered....makes sense now..... I'll post another blog soon with some key learnings on that topic - stay tuned. 

Well, that's enough for one day...... will start up on the next round of reading assignments and quizzes tomorrow..... g'night.