Fast-forwarding the days

After the somewhat relaxing day-off on Saturday, the remainder of the week became incredibly busy in carrying out our field projects and staying late in labs to get results.

2012/4/23

Another student's project - use staining techniques to stain scent glands on different parts of flowers, as well as using SEM to look at the structural differences between the parts.

Last few on Earth - Umbrella dracaena

Today is day four of the field course, and we learned about floral rewards to the pollinators, including nectar, pollen, resins, oils, gums, perfumes, floral and ovarian tissue, prey, sex, and shelter.

For this course, we had to conduct a small project related to pollination biology.  So in the afternoon, we were wondering around MBG trying to find topics and plants that interest us.

Inside the Climatron, we came across this precious Dracaena umbraculifera - only 16 individuals left on Earth and none left in the wild.  I am not sure if I should be happy to see it still surviving in here or sad to hear that it is one of the 16 left in this world.

Visiting Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG)

In the morning, we had a quick introduction of all the participants - mostly graduate students from US (two from UK), two scientists from China, a apiary owner, etc, we went straight to learning about the zoological diversity of pollinators - ranging from springtails to giraffes!


 In the afternoon, we were given a quick tour of the Missouri Botanical Garden - the second largest botanical garden in the world (after Royal Botanic Gardens in UK).