How to Dissect Flowers
Flower dissection can be an educational project to work on by yourself or with family members. By dissecting fresh flowers, you can develop a better understanding of pollination. When you dissect a flower, you'll learn to recognize its parts and note their unique characteristics. You'll also learn to identify a flower's male and female parts. There's no need to go to a lab to try this out. You can dissect fresh flowers at home, without complex tools.
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Things You'll Need
- Flower diagram
- Fresh flower
- Microscope or magnifying lens
- Scalpel or sharp knife
Instructions
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1
Obtain a basic flower diagram. This will help you to recognize the parts of the flower you are planning to dissect. While each type of flower is unique, the general parts are the same.
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2
Choose a fresh flower you'd like to dissect. You may want to start with a flower that has medium- to large-sized petals because its parts may be easier to see and handle.
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3
Use your fingers to pull the sepals down the stem and off your flower. Sepals are green projections at the base of your flower and at the top of its stem. They resemble leaves. Use a microscope or magnifying glass to examine the sepals. Note how they look when magnified and how they feel to the touch.
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4
Pull your flower petals down toward the stem and off your flower. Take a look at one of the petals under the magnification of a microscope or magnifying lens. Note the appearance of the petal when magnified and how it feels when you touch it.
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5
Remove the stamens, the male parts, from your flower. You may be able to break them off with your fingers. Alternatively, you can use a scalpel or sharp knife to cut them off your flower's stem. Each stamen has two parts: anthers, which carry pollen, and filaments, which support the anthers. Use a magnifying glass or microscope to examine the grains of pollen the anthers are holding.
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6
Determine whether your flower is a monocot or dicot. You can do this by examining the petals as you cut them from your flower. A monocot will have petals that appear in bunches of three. The leaves of these flowers have veins that run parallel along the length of the leaves. Dicots have petals that appear in bunches of four or five. Their leaves have veins that appear to be branched.
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7
Remove everything remaining on the flower, except the pistil, which is the female part of the flower. It resembles a vase with a bulb-like base. Cut the pistil in half vertically, and use a magnifying lens to see the long tube that transports pollen to the flower's ovary--lower portion of the pistil. Check for eggs, called ovules, inside the ovary.
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Tips & Warnings
Since flowers parts are delicate, some of them may break or fall apart as you attempt to examine them. If this happens, just start with a new flower.
