Botany Week Three

This week we explored vascular bundles and why/how they draw water up the stem. We started by placing a bag around a leafy plant (with a separate control bag) to see that plants release water through their leaves.

Then we placed some celery stalks in red food colouring, the next morning they were nicely coloured so we cut the end of to look at the vascular bundles

and gently broke the celery to take a closer look at the xylem tubes.

We discussed how when the water evaporates through the leaves it creates an area of low pressure (like sucking on a straw) so more water is drawn up from the root hairs, through the tubes and into the leaves. This was followed up by watching a great video on You Tube.


After we had discussed the three types of transpiration and drawn a poster,

we looked at how the waxy cuticle on the top surface of a leaf helps reduce water loss,

they coloured a paper square with wax and left the other unwaxed, dropped the same amount of liquid on the centre of each and compared the results.

They also looked at the parts of a flower in more detail - dissecting two different types of flower, matching them to their 'parts of flower' cards and comparing the differences between the two types.

Rose has enjoyed looking at our homemade felt puzzles for parts of a flower, tree and leaf.