Dora the Explorer

Heyo World!

Today we started off the day with a fun lesson on leaves and the related veins they have. With Angiosperms, the most common plants that are found to produce seeds and flowers. They are also known as most of our produce that is found at supermarkets and grocery stores. On the opposite side of this spectrum, there comes gymnosperms which are known to be the pine leaves on conifers. The biggest difference between the angiosperms and the gymnosperms, other than the shapes of the leaves, are the veins in the leaves. By puncturing a gymnosperm, the veins that were severed caused a section of the leaf to be unable to receive the nutrients it needs to survive. On the other hand, if an angiosperm's veins were cut off, the plant would still use its web like vein structure to still give nutrients to the rest of the plant except the area punctured. Then after talking about leaves veins, the different kinds of leaves depending on the climate of the area and how this could be used to find out the climate of the past centuries before, we got to have a small lab tour of innovating ways how leaves are being used in a laboratory sense like how much pressure it would take for a leaf to have all of its moisture all pressed out.

Then after a small introduction on leaf veins, we talked about Cyanotype which was originally used in blueprints of buildings before anything digital was adopted. This type of printing utilizes the sun to turn its natural green color to the same blue found on blueprints. How to stain the paper was through a process of using shadows to create patterns that, when dunked into water, will show up as white. Then after we looked at the world of herbariums and how we could use this in the future for the repopulation of a species, we went out for a botanical garden tour to explore our senses.

Going back to the topic of herbariums. Speaking from personal experiences of making one for my city of Rancho Palos Verdes, I was fascinated that this could be used as a historical log as well as a climate log for the city I live in.

Here is an example of what one sheet of an herbaria looks like.

Going more into how people have utilized herbariums to tell the history of a city, especially its pollution, a study about heavy metals found in plants over the centuries caught my eye. The Botanical Society of America, compares concentrations of copper, lead, and zinc in specimens collected from 1846 to 1916 and compares these plants from the same areas since 2015. In the end of Dr.Whitfield's lead scientist project, the whole team still aims to perfect their findings over the years to not just plant but also to pond sediments, solid and to collect more plant diversity. There was a significant growth of heavy metals in all of the herbarium’s pressed plant species as the years went on but there is still a gap in knowledge about other plants and the other beings around the plants as well. Collecting a wide variety of plants for an herbarium is very crucial to this fact as to keep the sample size for projects like this as wide as possible. Herbariums are the future and the past of figuring out trends found in history so that the future of the world can stop making those same ones. Hopefully the digitalization of herbariums are keeping alive the dream of technology and nature growing together as the years progress.

Before I turn in for this blog post, here are some photos of what I saw at the garden today with some descriptions and a sketch page of what I drew. I was in Delta group and my partner for doing sight is with Jack Winters.

Before looking at any of the plants in the garden, the sound of the small pond trickling by caught my eyes and ears. There were a small swarm of honey bees at the shores of the river drinking some of the water that seeped into the mud.

Looking at the side of the small stream, I saw some beautiful light blueish purple flowers that naturally drooped down. They had no name tag that I could see but the color was very different to the warmer tones of the garden.

Looking around again, I found some dried and chopped bamboo that looked in need of a new plant to replace it with.

Then next to the bamboo was a spiraling red flower that looked as though it had not bloomed but it already has.

Finally After all the garden was over, my first cyanotype came out of drying fully and is ready to be transported home.

See you all soon!