Marsilea: The Fast Fern
The aquatic fern, Marsilea (sometimes called “water clover”), is a useful teaching organism because of the speed with which gametophyte development proceeds.

Full Record

A Beginners Guide to the Study of Plant Structure
This resource contains detailed protocols and instructional information used to conduct an undergraduate laboratory exercise in introductory botany and plant structure. It includes student outlines an...

Full Record

A lesson in prairie conservation: An example of collaborative science outreach to local community schools through cooperation between local industry and undergraduate students at a local university
Eli Lilly Company provided supplies for undergraduate students to plan and deliver lessons in prairie conservation to local elementary school students. The resulting lesson and laboratory experiment f...

Full Record

A Methanol-Free Method of Extracting Secondary Chemicals
This experiment examined the inducible responses of tobacco. Leaf toxicity was assessed by a brine shrimp bioassay. A new method of extraction was used in this bioassay. Previously, secondary chemical...

Full Record

A Novel Method to Archive Plant Material for DNA Analysis
In this exercise, students isolate and analyze DNA from food plants in a supermarket, or from common backyard plants. Extracting plant DNA is often difficult using conventional means because undesirab...

Full Record

A Scenario-Based Study of Root Tip Mitosis
This workshop presents a scenario-based method of introducing students to the cell cycle. In the scenario, students are presented with a crop that might be affected by a soil fungus that secretes a le...

Full Record

A Simulated Pollination Exercise
It is generally not clear from general biology texts, or from popular videos on the subject,why certain flowers require a very specific animal to carry its pollen from one plant to another. This exerc...

Full Record

Active Learning Formats for Botany Field Trips
Are you tired of leading field trips in the “pied piper” format? The traditional field trip consists of the leader at the head with the students trailing behind. Upon arrival at a specimen, the leader...

Full Record

An Evolutionary Approach to Teaching about Ferns in a Plant Kingdom Course
This exercise should be used to have students form their own classification of ferns by observing a variety of structural modifications in several ferns. The activity will give the students an underst...

Full Record

An Introduction to Plant Vascular Systems
As a laboratory exercise that uses scientific techniques to add an investigative component to study the vascular system of plants.

Full Record