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Tulip Garden Update: May 17, 2002
Today's Report Includes:
- Tulip Map Shows It All
- Garden Highlights
- Snapshot of Spring's Journey North
- Virginia Living Museum Looks Back at Data
- Keeping an Eye on Your Tulips? Challenge Question #16
- More In Tune with Time: Biological Timing and Movement of Plants
- WHAT and WHY? Factors that Influence Flower Movements
- Experimenting with Plants in a Vase
- Spontaneous Generation?
- The Family of Lilies: Discussion of Challenge Question #17
- Year-End Evaluation: Please Share Your Thoughts!
Tulip Map Shows It All
With tulip gardens emerging all the way up into to Alberta this week we have witnessed another spring season's arrival in North America. Just a few more in the most northern climates have yet to emerge and bloom, but long days will soon bring summer-like weather to all of us.
Since our last update just 1 northern gardens reported emerged this week and we have 6 more blooming.
Take a look at this week's map below- the last one in our snapshot series.
Garden Highlights
Peace River, Alberta finally have a report, "Our tulips have emerged (5/01). It is quite a surprise to see them surface since the temperature is much below zero each night. We are hoping the tulips will bloom before the end of June since that is the end of our school year. We have had so much fun planting the bulbs. We force grew 4 bulbs in our classroom. A great success! We enjoyed following the maps and watching the approach of spring. At least someone is getting spring!"
An excited report came in from Daggett, MI, "The blooms are beautiful! The students measured the flowers and the petals were about 4 and 5 inches!"
Snow didn't stop these tulips from Roosevelt Elementary School in Jamestown, ND, "We were afraid that we were going to lose our tulips to a late snow fall, they and are beautiful."
Snapshot of Spring's Journey North
We bid farewell to Spring, 2002 with this series of maps which show the greening of spring across North America--thanks to you!
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Gardens Planted |
February 8 |
February 22 |
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March 8 |
March 22 |
April 5 |
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April 19 |
May 3 |
May 17 |
Virginia Living Museum Looks Back at Data
The Children's Learning Garden at the Virginia Living Museum has planted a Journey North tulip garden every year since 1998. This year they were excited to have enough data to make some interesting observations. Take a look at their data:
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Year |
Emerge date |
Bloom date |
Planting date |
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1998 |
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Dec. 14 and 16 |
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1999 |
Feb. 13 |
April 4 |
Oct.26 and 28 |
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2000 |
Feb. 16 |
March 16 |
Dec. 12 and 14 |
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2001 |
Feb. 4 |
March 18 |
Oct. 23 and 25 |
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2002 |
Feb. 8 |
March 16 |
not yet |
Judy Molnar reported that every year they had consistent bloom dates except for one. This is what they wrote:
"Our Horticulture Curator looked back at our rain & snow weather data, and found that late spring snow delayed the bloom in 1999. If we go to National Weather Service archives we could get actual temperatures for more detail."
They found that the National Weather Service data correlates well with their blooming times:
- 1999 - Jan. & Feb. rainy, snow/rain mix on Feb. 25, March 9, and March 15.
- 2000 - snow in Jan. & early Feb., late Feb. & March rainy.
- 2001 - Jan. & Feb. rainy, snow/rain mix March 4, rain March 13 & 16
- 2002 - heavy snow Jan. 3, rain later in Jan., Feb. dry, March rainy
-Judy Molnar, Education Associate, VA Living Museum (judy.molnar@valivingmuseum.org)
Keeping an Eye on Your Tulips? Challenge Question #16
Challenge Question #16 asked you to watch the tulips in your gardens or the dandelions in your neighborhood. Did they open and close? We were watching ours here at the Journey North headquarters. Here is what we saw:
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Flowers Closed |
Flowers Open |
Read on to learn more about the opening and closing of flowers.
More In Tune with Time: Biological Timing and Movement of Plants
Biological timing plays an important role in the survival of plants and animals. Many organisms follow a rhythm that is controlled internally. Outside factors trigger opening and closing movements of many flowers. Plant scientists call these "Nastic" movements. Three groups of flowers have these movements:
- flowers which change their opening and closing times according to weather conditions.
- flowers which change their times for opening and closing with the length of the day.
- flowers which have fixed times for opening and closing.
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Nastic movements are responses to stimuli and give a uniform response regardless of the direction they come
from. Other types of movements, like phototropic movements (like our earlier experiments with plants in the windowsill
that moved toward the light) respond to stimuli coming from one direction.
WHAT and WHY? Factors that Influence Flower Movements
The WHAT and WHY of flower movement can be a fascinating study. One factor we can study relates to the survival mechanisms of plants. All organisms are determined to survive. For plants to survive they need to reproduce. Sometimes the pollen produced in a flower needs to be moved from one plant to another for the seed to be fertilized. This is called pollination. Some large tropical flowers bloom only at night because their pollinators are night-flying bats. Other flowers stay open at night to be pollinated by moths, insects that are active only at night. Thinking about this gives us a little more understanding about when a flower might open and close.
Some other factors to think about:
- protection of flowering parts
- conservation of moisture
- conservation of energy
What makes the flowers open and close? Inside the plant many things are happening as the plant responds to its
environment. As temperatures and daylight change the amount of liquid inside the plant cells changes. Any increase
can build up pressure in the cells and chemicals stored in them are pushed out and moved around within the plant.
These chemicals regulate the plants movements.
Did you cut some of your flowers and bring them inside to see if they would open and close in the vase? Here is
another idea to investigate! Read on-
Experimenting with Plants in a Vase
Have you ever put some flowers in a vase of water, enjoyed their beauty and then forgotten to throw them away after a few days? Something happens to them over time that is worth investigating.
Try this!
Try a simple test like the ones done by the famous French chemist and microbiologist, Louis Pasteur in 1836. Cut 2 tulips (or any other flower) from your garden. Bring them inside. Place each one in a vase of water. Change the water in one vase every day and leave the water alone in the other.
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Predict what will happen to each flower.
Observe the flowers each day for a week and record what you see. (Be sure to look closely at the cut part of the stem.)
After a week answer these questions:
- How would you describe the unchanged water?
- How do the lower stems compare?
After a week or more, take a sample of water from each of the vases and look at them under a microscope. You
will probably see very small organisms called bacteria in the water. Where did they come from?
Spontaneous Generation?
Long ago, in ancient history, it was thought that lower life forms, especially insects, were reproduced spontaneously. People thought they just appeared - coming out of other substances. As scientific experimentation became more systematic in the 1700s, scientists questioned these old theories and experimented to find new answers. The development of the microscope opened a new world. Microscopes revealed a whole new world of organisms that appeared to arise spontaneously.
Learn more about the development of microbiology and try some great experiments.
The Family of Lilies: Discussion of Challenge Question #17
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- six petals
- six stamens, one pistil
- a 3-lobed stigma
If your tulips finished flowering a while ago, take a look to see if they are setting seeds inside the enlarged
pod. Cut it open across the swollen pod to see the three-chambered pods. Do they have seeds inside?
Year-End Evaluation: Please Share Your Thoughts!
Please take a few minutes to share your suggestions and comments in our Year-End Evaluation Form below. The information you provide at the end of each year is the single most important tool used to guide our planning.
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Journey North |
This is the FINAL Tulip Garden Update. Thank you for all your work on this International study. Have a great summer and we look forward to hearing from you again in the fall!
Copyright 2002 Journey North. All Rights Reserved. Please send all questions, comments, and suggestions to our feedback form
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