Experiment 3: Thirsty Flowers

Objectives: To observe how plants use their stems to get water and to compare what I expect to happen with what I observe to happen.

Predictions:   If I put a white carnation into a glass of blue colored water I think that all the petals will turn blue, starting from the center and spreading outwards from there. I don’t think that you will see the colored water in the stem as it colors the flower blue. If you add yellow to the flower, the flower will turn green.

Observations:

Here is the white carnation:

The carnation has fluffy white flowers, dark green stem, and dark green leaves.

Here is the white carnation split in half:

The carnation split in half has leaves extending into the stem, light green stem interior, and the petals extend into a light green bulb.

When put in blue dye for a few seconds, the inside of the stem turned blue. 

After half an hour, the carnation looked the same, except that it had a dark blue tip.

After two hours, the carnation’s petals started to turn blue around the outside edges.

After twenty and a half hours, the carnation looked the same.

Results:

On the cross section of the flower in the blue water, there are blue lines starting from the end of the stem, running through the stem and the petals and collecting on the outside edge of them. In comparison, on the cross section of the flower in the clear water, the stem is green, the petals are plain white, and there don’t appear to be lines of any kind on it.

On the petals on the flower in blue water, there are blue lines running through petal in scale-like patterns, starting from the end of the petals and collecting on the outside edge of them. In comparison, the petals on the flower in clear water doesn’t appear to have any scale-like details on it.

On the leaves and bulb on the stem of the flower in the blue water, there is a blue blob on the base of each leaf and a blue diamond shaped pattern on the bulb of the flower. In comparison, the bulb and leaves on the stem of the flower in the clear water are green.

Conclusion:

I thought that all of the petals of the flower would turn completely blue but what really happened was that the petal’s edges turned blue and the petals developed a scale-like pattern. The reason this happened is because the colored water is moving up through the xylem in the stem, which is the tissue that draws water and nutrients up through the soil.