Tulip Test Gardens
Update: April 22, 2010	Please report:
The map is mostly red this week, but tulips are just emerging in some gardens in Oregon, Wyoming, New Hampshire, and Alaska. In your blooming gardens lies an opportunity for a botany lesson. A slideshow will help you study the tulip flower and its separate parts. Discover some other related flowers. Check out a flower "sport." Maybe you have one in your garden, too. Today's Report Includes: Maps, Questions, and Highlights Explore: Botany of Tulip Flowers Focus: A Tulip "Sport" Resources: This Week's Tulip Garden Resources	Image of the Week
	Mystery Photo What could this be?
Maps, Questions, and Highlights
Highlights: Still Celebrating Emergence Gardeners in Alaska, Wyoming, New Hampshire, and Oregon are celebrating their tulips emergence from the ground. Some were under big piles of snow, and Alaska's tulips are emerging in the snow! What do you see when you look at your tulips? "The tulips we planted flowered. We noticed there are red, purple, brown, yellow, black inside the flower," Second graders from East Hartford, Connecticut noticed this week. Meanwhile as spring warms to summer-like weather elsewhere the tulip map is flooded with red. Where will gardens bloom next? Read More Garden Highlights	News came that our tulip "garden" planted in Afghanistan in 2008 has bloomed again in 2010!
map/sightings (North America) map/sightings (Eurasia) This Week's Map Questions (Handout)
Explore: Botany of Tulip Flowers
All living things are classified into groups called families. What family does the tulip belong in? To find out you have to start with the flower. Study your own blooming tulip or study this picture A Botany Lesson: Try This! Look closely at a tulip flower. Draw the flower (include all the flower parts you see). Label the plant parts if you can. After reading the botany lesson make any changes to your drawing. Slide Show Journal Question Your tulip flower drawing shows specialized flower parts called anthers and stigma. These plants parts are very colorful and beautiful, but in science there’s always a WHY behind WHAT you see. What purpose do the anthers and stigma have for tulip plants? Write your response in your journal. Then see what we think...
Focus: A Tulip "Sport"
Looking closely at your tulip flowers and you may see something surprising. Curiously, tulips don't always look similar. While the normal tulip flower has 6 petals, and 6 stamens, sometimes there are 8! "One tulip attracted our attention. It was very strange...it had 8 petals and 8 stamens! Our students and teacher came and looked at our "miracle" tulip. Other tulips all had 6 petals, as normal," wrote students in Azerbaijan. How can this happen? Have you seen a tulip with 8 petals in your garden? It is a possibility. When growers propagate such large quantities of a bulb variety, it isn't uncommon for an odd tulip to show up now and then. These are called "sports," or "chimeras." Keep your eyes open and you may see one in your garden! Inside of "sport" Mixed Emperor tulip flower Normal Mixed Emperor tulip flower "Sport" of the Mixed Emperor tulip Inside of a normal Red Emperor tulip flower Which of these 3 pictures show the "odd" 8-part tulip flowers? Count the parts! What do you notice about the stigma?
Related Journey North Lessons and Links
Slideshow: A Botany Lesson Slideshow: Our Tulips Bloomed Today: A Phenology Study Study: Isotherms: Bands of Temperature Color Mapping Spring Data: Lessons and Resources Helpful Weather Links: Climate Weather and Seasons Tulip Garden Journals (click-and-print)	Elsa created a poem about her experience with the tulip test garden. She shares it with all the Journey North gardeners.
More Journey North Lessons and Teaching Ideas!
The Next Tulip Garden Update Will Be Posted on April 29, 2010. Facebook Pinterest Twitter © 1997 – 2019 Journey North. All rights reserved.