Journey North International Plant Study Spring 2003

Tulip Garden Update: February 7, 2003

Today's Report Includes:

Ground Breakers in 2003
Maps R Us: How Cool Were U? Challenge Question #1
How Long Does it Take a Tulip to Grow?
Challenge Questions #2 and #3
Too Many Tulips? A Tip
A Tip From Texas
Which Comes First? The Tulip or the Tree's Leaves?

Ground Breakers in 2003
New life and a wonderful sight in an uncertain world. The first tulips of 2003 have emerged! Where? Before you look, guess where they are: In which states, provinces or countries do you think tulips might be coming up for daylight?

Click twice to see all gardens planted

View of Eastern Hemisphere

...And the award for the FIRST tulips of the year 2003 goes to.... Now whose do you think will be the first tulips to BLOOM?

Gardeners are sharing news about their newly emerged bulbs:

(37.0759, -79.5142) Children’s Learning Garden, Newport News, VA
“The Journey North Tulips in our Children's learning garden have emerged sometime over the weekend! This is the earliest we've had emergence since we planted in fall of 1998. Maybe the melting snow woke them up!”

(45.5756, -121.653) Westside Elementary, Hood River, OR
“We've had a winter with 20 out of the first 26 days having above normal temperatures. Still, our tulips are not all emerged and are growing slowly.”

(34.1042, -117.291) Urbita Elementary School, San Bernardino, CA
“We've had an exceptionally warm winter-no rain all month and it feels like summer. This is the earliest our tulips have emerged in the last several years we have had planted them.”

Maps R Us: How Cool Were U?

Map courtesy of NOAA

Maps are cool. They can show us so many different things. There are maps of the school, maps of mountain ranges, under-the-ocean maps, population maps and migration maps. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration makes some really interesting maps using information they collect about weather. (We wish we could extend this map into Canada.)

Take a look and find your location on this temperature map.

Using your journals, write some of your thoughts to these questions:

What information does this map show?
What color is coded on the map where you live?
What does that color mean?
How do you think this will affect your tulips?
Can you use this information to help predict when tulips will emerge around the country?

What have you learned from this map about early winter temperatures in your area? Tell us how you filled in these blanks:

Challenge Question #1:
“I live in ________. Temperatures from Nov. through Jan. have been _________ here. I predict this will affect my tulips by ________.”

(To respond to this question, please follow the instructions below.)

How Long Does it Take a Tulip to Grow?
It should be easy to answer that question using information from a few Journey North gardens. Look at the dates each of the following gardens was planted, and the dates that the tulips emerged. Now count how many days it took for them to grow.

Town	State/ Prov/Cnty	Planted	Emerged	# Days
St. Louis	MO	11/13/02	02/05/03
Hood River	OR	10/15/02	01/25/03
Baton Rouge	LA	01/03/03	02/05/03
Croydon	UK	09/27/02	01/31/03

What's going on here? How would you complete these sentences?

Challenge Question #2:
"It took only ____ days for tulips in Baton Rouge, LA to emerge. It took ____ days for the tulips in St. Louis, MO to emerge, ____ days for tulips in Hood River, OR to emerge and ____ days in Croydon, UK (England). Therefore, the _____ must have been very different in those four places."

Challenge Question #3:
"Do you think counting the number of days is a good way to describe how long it takes tulips to grow? What other information do you need to know about those days?"

(To respond to these questions, please follow the instructions below.)

Too Many Tulips? A Tip

No such thing! But if younger students are overwhelmed with tulip data, follow the suggestion of 1st grade teacher Patti Prieves:

"As the first reports come in, we choose 5-10 places to record on our class map. We choose another 5-10 each time we receive a new report. Throughout the spring, we keep track of when tulips in these gardens emerge and when they bloom. The map becomes an important, ongoing fixture in the room or hallway."

Read on for more suggestions for analyzing data at all grade levels.

A Tip From Texas
Jo Leland, who has managed the Official Journey North garden in Kingwood, Texas since 1996, is getting smart after all these years:

"We'll be tracking tulips on a specialized map that shows where all current gardens are located," says Leland. "This will simplify things for the kids and save time (our most precious commodity) for everyone. Here's what I did:

1. I printed a copy of the map that shows where all Journey North gardens are planted:
http://www.learner.org/jnorth/images/graphics/t/tulip_map020703.gif

2. I took it to the local Kinko's and had it enlarged 320%.

3. I trimmed off the edges so it would go into their laminator--and walked out with a specialized map for under $5.00.

Which Comes First? The Tulip or the Tree's Leaves?
Do tulips emerge from the ground before the leaves come out on the trees in the spring? Or do the leaves come first? Which bloom first, tulips or trees?

Journey North's Leaf-Out Study

Try This!

We hope you'll help us measure spring's northward journey by reporting when leaves emerge on your trees. Here's how:

1. Adopt a local tree and learn its name. Try to find one of the following species, though any species will do:

Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum)

Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida)

Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides)

Redbud, Eastern or California (Cercis canadensis or C. occidentalis)

2. Plan to visit your adopted tree on a regular basis, beginning in the dead of winter. Sketch the same buds on the same small branch each time you visit. Watch the buds open, the tree bloom and the leaves emerge.

3. Predict whether your tulips or your tree will progress through each growing stage first.

4. When the leaves on your trees are the size of a U.S. (or Canadian) quarter, report to Journey North. That's our definition of "leaf-out".

Find out more about the Leaf-out Study

How to Respond to Today's Challenge Questions:

IMPORTANT: Answer only ONE question in each e-mail message.

1. Address an e-mail message to: jn-challenge-tulip@learner.org
2. In the Subject Line of your message write: Challenge Question # 1 (or #2 or #3).
3. In the body of EACH message, give your answer to ONE of the questions above.

The Next Tulip Garden Update Will Be Posted on February 14, 2003.