Journey North International Plant Study Spring 2006

Tulip Garden Update: April 14, 2006

Today's Update Includes:

This Week's Map and Data
Hardiness Zones and Tulips
Find the Anomaly: Challenge Question #11
Don't Come Closer! How Plants Protect their Space
I See Patterns, Do You? Discussing Challenge Question #9
Vertically Challenged Tulips: Discussing Challenge Question #10
The Tough Tulip Beats All Odds
Make Your Own: Tulip Models

This Week's Map and Data
This week BLOOMING tulips beat out EMERGING ones. We know that spring has almost arrived in North America when this happens! Compare this week’s garden with last in the week-by-week animation, and keep your eye on the northern-most gardens. When will the rest of our gardens emerge?

This Week's Data (Reported April 8 - 14, 2006)
Slideshow (Week-by-week animation)


Use the data to make your own map or print ours.	Study this week’s temperature map for clues about the next gardens to emerge and bloom.

Hardiness Zones and Tulips

Plant Hardiness Zones
(click to enlarge)

What’s your zone? Study the Plant Hardiness Zone map and compare it to this week’s tulip map.

Use it for predicting when the remaining Alaska gardens will emerge?

Locate the gardens on the Zone map
Make a general statement about plant zones and tulip emergence (and blooming).

Find the Anomaly: Challenge Question #11

2 flowers. Upon digging, 1 bulb (with dirt attached) was found.

In the tulip garden there is always something new to notice, measure or record. Sometimes abnormal or peculiar things occur in the garden. We call these things “anomalies.” Here’s an example of gardeners who reported an anomaly:
One of their tulip bulbs in the Northside Elementary garden grew 2 flower stalks. It was beautiful. But they were very curious – was this really 2 bulbs close together? or just a special bulb? Following the scientific method, they dug it up. Here’s what they found.
Have you seen any garden anomalies? Share what you have found this spring.

Challenge Question #11:
“ Describe a garden anomaly you found in your garden. Explain any investigation you did to understand how the anomaly happened.”

To respond to this question, please follow these instructions.

Don't Come Closer! How Plants Protect their Space
Have you ever felt like you needed your own space? Usually you can walk away or shut your door, but what can plants do? Plants and trees need to have their own space so they have enough nutrients and water. They can't walk or run anywhere. Plants have a different way of getting their own space. They use alleopathy.

Find out more about this amazing phenomenon then use radish seeds to try your own alleopathy experiment.

Don't Come Closer! How Plants Protect their own Space

I See Patterns, Do You? Discussing Challenge Question #9
What did you think the tulip map would look like in April? Did you predict that spring would move from south to north? Last time we asked: “Why are gardens along the oceans blooming further north now than gardens in the middle of the continent? Explain your answer.” Great discussion followed this question.

Read what Council, ID wrote

Vertically Challenged Tulips: Discussing Challenge Question #10
What’s going on with the tulips in Seattle? We asked: “Lafayette Elementary school’s tulips were stunted in height this year. What factors might have caused their tulip plants and tulips in the whole Seattle area to be shorter this spring?”

What do you think? Read on to hear what 5th graders in Council, ID think. Then, read an explanation from our Tulip Expert, Eve Blanchard. She walks you through how a scientist would solve this question.

Vertically Challenged Tulips

The Tough Tulip Beats All Odds

The tulip garden at Northside Elementary in Fairfield IL has bloomed against all odds.

The last day of March they reported in with a story and pictures of the struggles to grow their Journey North garden. Here’s what happened:

“We couldn't believe it, but our tulips did bloom. First of all we were worried about the weather. We had ice and snow flurries after our tulips begin to bud…”

Find out what else happened:

Make Your Own: Tulip Models
Try this neat, creative project from students at Irwin Math/Science Magnet Elementary School in Fort Wayne, IN.

Create a model of the entire tulip plant.

Here's How: Making Blooming Tulips in the Classroom

The Next Tulip Garden Update Will Be Posted on April 14, 2006.