Lesson B6: Plant Reproduction and Propagation

Key Ideas   Unit Checklist

  Video Lesson

Watch this video to learn about some special ways that plants survive and reproduce.

  Lesson B6: Plant Reproduction and Propagation

Figure B.1.6.1 – Honeybees collect nectar from clover flowers to make honey.
Figure B.1.6.2 – Honeybees digest flower nectar to make honey.


Flavoured Honey

The taste of honey depends on the type of flower from which bees collect nectar. Wild clover flowers grow all over the world, so clover honey is common everywhere. Clover flower honey is usually the type of honey sold in grocery stores. When a beehive is located near a particular type of flower, the honey will have the flavour of the flower nectar. Some special flavours are orange blossom honey, lavender honey, and blueberry honey.
Reading and Materials for This Lesson

Science in Action 7
Reading: Pages 111–115

Materials:
small sweet potato, knife, 8 toothpicks, glass jar, water

Figure B.1.6.3 – When bees collect nectar from lavender flowers, they make lavender honey.
Figure B.1.6.4 – Lavender honey smells like lavender flowers.


Bees and Flowers Need Each Other

Bees and flowering plants have an important relationship because they help each other survive. Flowers make a sugary liquid called nectar. Bees collect nectar to make it into honey, which is their food. When a bee sits on a flower to collect nectar, flower pollen gets onto the bee’s body. Bees are especially good pollinators because they also collect the pollen as a source of food. The pollen travels with the bee to the next flower where it can pollinate the flower to produce seeds.
Figure B.1.6.5 – Bees and other pollinators are very important for many plants.

 Watch More

Pollinators

Bees are not the only insects or animals that help pollinate plants. Watch this video to see how bats, hummingbirds, and butterflies pollinate plants.

Pollen Allergies

Some people have allergies in the spring when trees and grass produce pollen. Watch this video to learn why pollen causes allergies.


Disappearing Honeybees

Researchers are noticing that the number of honeybees in the world has dropped a lot in the last few years. Bees dying in large numbers is a big concern for honey producers and for all humans. Bees pollinate many of the fruits and vegetables that we eat.

Without bees to pollinate, fruit and vegetable plants will flower, but they cannot make seeds and fruit. In some parts of the world, pollinators now are in such short supply that apple and cherry orchards are failing. To allow the apple and cherry trees to bear fruit, people spend many hours using small brushes to pollinate flowers by hand.
Figure B.1.6.6 – Hand pollination is necessary when there is a shortage of pollinators or when the grower or researcher chooses deliberately to pollinate specific flowers.

 Watch More

Disappearing Honeybees

Why are bees disappearing? This video explores some of the options.

What will happen if bees continue to disappear? Watch this video to learn more.

  Connections



Connections: Occupations
>> Beekeepers

Beekeepers are honey farmers with the special name of apiarists, and their “honey farms” are apiaries. Beekeepers have many tasks. They construct wooden boxes as hives (homes) for bees. They ensure that bees stay healthy. Some beekeepers transport beehives to other farms to pollinate plant crops. Beekeepers collect honey from hives for people to eat. Some honey is used for industrial purposes, too.
Figure B.1.6.7 – These stacked wooden boxes are beehives – homes for bees. Beehives are placed near flowers where the bees can collect nectar.

Figure B.1.6.8  -  Bees build honeycombs on frames in a hive.
Figure B.1.6.9  -  Beekeepers make sure that bees stay healthy.

 Watch More

Beekeepers

Watch this video to hear a young beekeeper talk about her job.



Seedless Fruit

Have you seen seedless watermelons, seedless grapes, or seedless oranges advertised in the grocery store? Perhaps you enjoy eating them without the annoyance of picking out the seeds. 

Some fruits have tiny hard seeds that hurt your teeth if you bite on them accidentally. By chance, people have discovered versions of these fruiting plants that do not have seeds, and they have reproduced these plants in other ways.
Figure B.1.6.10 – Seedless fruit is great to eat, but how does it reproduce?

 Watch More

Seedless Fruit

This video explains how seedless fruits reproduce without seeds.

  Try It!

Tubers

Potatoes are tubers, which are thick underground stems that contain lots of stored food. Potato tubers are the starchy part of the potato that we eat. Potato plants use the starch stored inside the tuber to grow new stems and roots from the potato “eyes”.

Materials:

  • unpeeled small sweet potato (The potato should fit into the jar, but there shouldn’t be a huge space between the potato and the edge of the jar.)
  • knife
  • 8 toothpicks
  • glass jar
  • water


Instructions:

    1. Push the toothpicks into the sweet potato, 3 cm from the cut edge. Space the toothpicks evenly in a circle around the sweet potato.

    2. Balance the sweet potato on the toothpicks on the edge of the jar.  That is, the sweet potato piece should be held in the opening of the jar by the 3 toothpicks.

    3. Fill the jar with water almost to the brim. The cut edge of the sweet potato should be in the water.

    4. Place the jar in a warm sunny location. Add water to the jar as needed to keep the bottom of the sweet potato covered. Observe the jar each day for 2 weeks.

Question:

Think about the following question very carefully. Then, type or write your answer. After you have your answers, click the questions for feedback.

A new plant started growing on the sweet potato tuber. Roots grew from the underwater potato eyes, and shoots started growing from the potato eyes above water. The plant used the energy stored in the sweet potato tuber to start growing.

If you do this in late spring or early summer, try planting the sweet potato with its sprouts in a pot or in soil outside to see if the plant grows larger!


Photo by Rachel Zack.

My Backyard Garden  

My family has a vegetable garden in our backyard.

I have to do chores to help around my house. If my parents give me a choice of chores to do in the summer, I always choose the garden. I think that taking care of plants is more like a science experiment than a chore!

To learn more about gardening in your backyard, click here to Explore with Elsie.




  Make sure you have understood everything in this lesson. Use the Self-Check below, and the Self-Check & Lesson Review Tips to guide your learning.

Unit B Lesson 6 Self-Check

Instructions


Complete the following 6 steps. Don't skip steps – if you do them in order, you will confirm your understanding of this lesson and create a study bank for the future.

  1. DOWNLOAD the self-check quiz by clicking here.

  2. ANSWER all the questions on the downloaded quiz in the spaces provided. Think carefully before typing your answers. Review this lesson if you need to. Save your quiz when you are done.

  3. COMPARE your answers with the suggested "Self-Check Quiz Answers" below. WAIT! You didn't skip step 2, did you? It's very important to carefully write out your own answers before checking the suggested answers.

  4. REVISE your quiz answers if you need to. If you answered all the questions correctly, you can skip this step. Revise means to change, fix, and add extra notes if you need to. This quiz is NOT FOR MARKS, so it is perfectly OK to correct any mistakes you made. This will make your self-check quiz an excellent study tool you can use later.

  5. SAVE your quiz to a folder on your computer, or to your Private Files. That way you will know where it is for later studying.

  6. CHECK with your teacher if you need to. If after completing all these steps you are still not sure about the questions or your answers, you should ask for more feedback from your teacher. To do this, post in the Course Questions Forum, or send your teacher an email. In either case, attach your completed quiz and ask; "Can you look at this quiz and give me some feedback please?" They will be happy to help you!


Self-Check Time!
|

Self-Check Quiz Answers

Click each of the suggested answers below, and carefully compare your answers to the suggested answers.

If you have not done the quiz yet – STOP – and go back to step 1 above. Do not look at the answers without first trying the questions.

Bees are good pollinators. Bees collect and transfer pollen between flowers.  When pollen is transferred to the pistil of a flower, it fertilizes the plant’s ovule and produces a seed. Sometimes fruit forms around the seed.

Without pollination, less edible fruit would grow, and many edible plants could not reproduce. Without bees, humans would have to hand-pollinate plants, which is a lot more work.
Garlic is a bulb. Garlic bulbs store food and stay dormant until the plant is ready to reproduce. With light and warmth, the garlic bulbs sprout. The food in the bulb feeds new garlic plant stems.
Monkeys are attracted to eating the sweet green fruit. When monkeys eat kiwifruit, they eat the seeds too. When monkeys expel feces, kiwifruit seeds exit the monkey’s body in a new location.
The spider plant forms stems above ground, which is reproduction with runners.
In order for seeds and fruit to form, the flowers on a plant need to be fertilized. The spring hailstorm destroyed the flowers on the trees before they were fertilized. Without fertilized flowers, no fruit could form on the trees.