Megan Thees
Blog Assignment #2: Scientific Observation
On Saturday April 8th, 2017, I took a hike to the top of Sauer's Mountain in Leavenworth, Washington. This was a neat trail because the first mile of the hike was on Mr. Sauer's private property who created us when we were parking. He built these trails 30 years ago and still allows locals and tourists to hike on his property. After the first mile you enter National Forest, but the mountain is named after the man himself. I brought my camera knowing that the views and the new spring growth would be epic. I took pictures along the way. One of the first pictures I took was what I think is some sort of Hosta plant, but I am not sure exactly how to identify plants yet so that is my best guess. I'm also guessing that the elevation at which this picture was take was about 1,300ft.
It wasn't until I got higher on the mountain that I decided to use this plant for my scientific observation. When we were almost to the summit, I'm guessing at 3,000 ft in elevation, I saw the same plant but at a different stage in its development. I decided to observe this plant because I thought it was interesting that elevation might be a factor in plant growth.
Lower elevation observations:
I observed this plant for a total of 15 minutes between the two photo stops. In the first photo I was attracted to the trinity shape of the plant with its leaves coming out from three different points of the same axis, layer after layer. The veins of the leaves are very prominent. Water droplets were caught on the leaves from the recent rainfall. With the structure of the plant, the water easily gets funneled to the center of the plant from which the leave grow.
Higher elevation observations:
The plant is not as far along in development as the lower elevation plant. You can still see the different layers of leaves that will eventually fan out. They look like little green shoots pushing out of the ground. There were still traces of snow at this elevation, not near the plant but this could be a factor in colder ground temperatures.
There were no abiotic factors that influenced my observation, other than my initial attraction was of its physical appearance.
I would not change the mode of observation of this plant other than maybe spending more time looking at it or possibly going back in a couple weeks or month to see the progression of growth at both elevations.
Scientific questions?
What factors of elevation change effect the growth of plants?
Why is plant growth slower at higher elevations?
Does ground temperature effect plant growth?
Is it the oxygen level that is effecting the growth of this plant?
Is plant growth better on North facing vs. South facing slope?
Hypothesis
Plants develop sooner at lower elevations and warmer ground temperature
I like that you chose to observe a plant. It's interesting that you saw a difference in growth stage at different elevations, this could be largely attributed to temperature, the plant at lower elevation would in theory experience warmer ambient temperatures earlier in the season.
ReplyDeleteThe plant looks like it is Veratrum californicum (California corn lily, white or California false hellebore)... it's poisionous but they are currently doing studies on it by extracting Cyclopamine from it for anti-cancer drugs (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21222574).
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