Flower Dissection

Do you know the purpose of a flower is just to make more plants? Their bright colors, sweet aromas, and structure encourage pollinators to come enjoy a nice snack, while sneaking pollen onto their back! As the pollinators move from flower to flower, they are helping the flower produce seeds for future generations. Uncover the parts of a flower through a fun dissection lab.

Materials:

Large Blooming Flowers (Azaleas, Lilies, daffodils, gladiolus-Avoid daisies and other composite flowers)

Tweezers

Paper or printed worksheet for labeling

Magnifying Glass (optional) 

Azalea image 2.jpg

Directions:

1. Carefully look at each of the flowering plants. If you have a magnifying glass, you can use it to examine your plants and their flowers. What does each plant and flower look like?

2. Choose one of your flowering plants and start your plant dissection. Use your hands, scissors or tweezers and carefully take apart your plant. Which plant parts can you identify?

3. Once you have removed one part of the plant, try to identify it, and place it on the paper. Label each part of the flower. Identity (written or verbally) the role of each flower part. (Check out the vocabulary section below!) 

Flower Dissection featured image.jpg

5. When you have finished taking the flower apart, look at all its different parts. How do different parts within one plant compare?

6. Next repeat the dissection with additional flowering plants. Then compare the plant parts on each paper paper. What do you notice about the same plant part from different flowering plants?

Additional Activities:

 If you have intact specimens of the types of flowers you dissected, examine these to see how all of the plant parts you identified fit together in the whole flower. How do these vary across different types of flowers?

 Draw each of your flowering plants on a piece of paper. Color your plant and label each part that you identified.

 Make a "plant parts" poster for each plant: Label a piece of paper with the name of one of your plants. Then tape the full flowering plant on one side of the paper. On the other side, tape each plant part into a different section of the paper. Label each plant part, and decorate your poster.

 Did you know that some parts of flowering plants are edible? Look at carrots, beets, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, apples, peppers, lettuce, peas, corn or cabbage. Can you find out which parts of each plant we usually eat?

VOCABULARY

Petal – outer sections of the flower

Stem – main stalk of the plant

Pistil – part of the flower that produces seeds

Stigma – sticky part at the top of the pistil that catches the pollen

Style – long part of the pistil between the stigma and the ovary

Stamen – part of the flower that produces pollen

Filament – part of the stamen that supports the anther

Anther – part at the top of the stamen that produces the pollen

Ovary – large part of the pistil that produces the ovules

Ovules – when the ovules are fertilized by pollen, they become the seeds

For a printable dissection lab click on the link below. 

k5_DesertGardeners_flowerDissection.pdf

k5_DesertGardeners_flowerDissection.pdf