City Nature Challenge 2020: April 24 - 27

The annual International City Nature Challenge is April 24 - 27.  Here is the website...

https://citynaturechallenge.org/

Get ready.  The City Nature Challenge starts this Friday!
Have you downloaded the iNaturalist app onto your phone?  If you have an Android, you can even record birdsongs.
You might want to download the app now and start uploading photos for practice.  They can be photos of plants, mushrooms, animals, any living thing, but not pets, and not plants that you planted in your garden.  If you can't identify them, it doesn't matter. You have extra days in which to try to identify them later, even after you upload them onto iNaturalist.  Also, other people will see your photos and try to help identify things.

The results are in!....  You can see Baltimore's observations at this website...
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2020-baltimore-area

671 people in the greater Baltimore metropolitan area, including surrounding counties, made  10,973 observations, with 530 people identifying 1, 498 species from those observations!

41, 165 observers all over the world made 815,258 observations and identified 32,600 species.  Here are the collective results...
https://citynaturechallenge.org/collective-results-2020/

Flower Dissection, including art activity and creative snack (but DO NOT EAT DAFFODILS!)

Flower Dissection

If you can get to a park or woods that has daffodils, or if you have some in your yard, a fun activity is to study flower anatomy.  Any flower will do, but daffodils are especially large, so the parts are easy to identify.  Just be sure your kids are not going to eat any part of the plant!  If you can't be sure, don't use daffodils for this activity. Any kind of flower will do.  

Did you know that flowers have male and/or female parts?  Some flowers are only male, with stamens covered with yellow dusty pollen.  Some flowers are only female, with pistils.  Daffodils have both male and female parts, stamens and pistils.  If you find lots of flowers, you can compare them with each other to see which are male, which are female, which are both.  Sometimes the male parts are longer, sometimes the female parts are longer, and sometimes they are the same height.

Cylburn Naturalist

at 6:50 AM

It is fun to draw the flower, then take it apart and draw each part separately. In order to reproduce by making seeds, the pollen from the stamen needs to get to the pistil. Some flowers have male and female parts, but they often have ways to keep from pollinating themselves. For instance, the stamen and pistil may be different heights. 

Identify your flower, then research what kind of animal pollinates that kind of flower. How do they pollinate it? Does the flower have a special way to get the pollen to stick to the pollinator? Or perhaps your flower is pollinated by the wind? While looking at a photo of the pollinator for your flower, draw one on your picture, pollinating the flower.  Message me with your drawing, so others can be inspired!

Daffodils might not be pollinated by bees anymore, according to this article...https://www.honeybeesuite.com/who-pollinates-the-daffodils/

But many other flowers are...

For more fun, try mixing watercolors to match the color of your flowers.  Use a strip of paper to test the color on after you've mixed it, then hold the strip up to the flower to see if it matches.  Then, once you've got all the right colors, paint your picture.  Be sure to use thick watercolor paper, so the paper doesn't get wet and tear! 

Trick:  Use two cups of water for rinsing your brush between colors.  Always dip into one cup first to rinse your brush. Then dip in the second cup to be sure.  The second cup will stay pretty clean, but you will have to pour out the first cup from time to time and fill it with clean water.

Grow a bulb at home in a bulb vase or a jar of pebbles.  Fill with water to just below the bottom of the bulb.  

You can track its growth on a graph.

You can take apart the petals from the flower and press them between two pieces of plain white paper in a book.  In a week or so, you can make a collage from the petals and glue them onto a piece of paper to frame and hang up.

Cylburn Arboretum:  The park is open to the public.  We have many fields of daffodils, but you are not allowed to pick them here.  You can, however, look at them closely to see the male and female parts.  You can also compare them with the many flowers here that are blooming right now: hellebores, for example.  Also, we have many trees that are blooming now, like magnolias, cherries, crabapples, redbud.  Many of the trees have labels on them, and many of the flowers in the gardens have labels, so you will know what kind they are. 

Creative Snack: Edible Arrangements 

(DO NOT EAT DAFFODILS!)

Materials: Grapes, blueberries, pineapple rings, canteloupe, etc.

Parsley sprigs, baby kale, or spinach

Long wooden skewers

Floral foam (or  a big piece of watermelon)

Instructions:  

Stick a skewer through the pineapple ring from the side, through a grape in the middle, then through the rest of the ring.  Skewer greens.  Insert into watermelon or floral foam. 

Don't eat until everybody has finished making flowers!