I had a crazy busy week so far but I had a great start at the beginning of the week, which was my Honors graduation ceremony and the PCA party. I received my stole and I have an honor to graduate as an honors student on May 10^th, the graduation day. Also I received my Phoenix College Ambassador medallion for 2012-2013, for my graduation. I am pretty excited for my graduation and these achievements motivate me more to finish the semester with more power and confident.

 Since last week I was working on my new project which is still on continue of allelopathy project. And basically, after collecting the soils, first I grew the bacteria which exist on the soil under the canopy of each plants (Sycamore, Citrus, Oak, Sunflower, and Mesquite), and the second sample from outside the canopy from the similar type of soil and compare them with each other. And, next is identifying the bacteria.

The Desert Botanical Garden

Before I start talking about my projects and the fun field trip that we had last Friday, I would like to tell you all good luck with your finals and projects in the last couple weeks of school. I can’t believe how time flies!

If you love plants, there is a very special place to visit. And even if you don’t know anything about them there’s a wonderful way to learn about the plants and their different species, also about the animals and insects in desert, by visiting this place, which is the Desert Botanical Garden.

So on Friday, April 12^th, we went to this unique place, Desert Botanical Garden, by leading Mr. Schample, and Bioscience Department staffs (Josh, Matt, and Dijana). It was my first time visit but I can say that was such a great experience and I never forget it.

Chihuly glass sculpture

Desert Botanical Garden is an amazing place; first I thought it is just a desert garden with couple different cactus but when we got to the entrance and I saw the three Chihuly glass sculptures. I expected to see something different, which was a right guess. Almost the whole garden was in bloom with different desert flowers. The paths were divided to the separate areas and they covered by diverse collection of cactai, desert wildflowers and prickly pears. Also they were naming all different species of cactai and other desert plants. One of my favorite parts was the monumental “Four Seasons” sculptures by Philip Haas, which composed of flowers, fruits and veggies. 

Summer

Spring

Autumn

Winter

Probably you could see hundreds and hundreds different cactus from all around the world but between all of them I found the “Old Man Cactus (Cephalocereus senilis)” as my favorite one. According to Wikipedia, it is native to Guanajuato and Hidalgo in eastern Mexico. I was more concern about the white hairs and I find out that “the most striking feature is the shaggy coat of long, white hairs suggestive of unkempt hair on an old man. The coat is a particularly striking silvery white on the young cactus; as the plant ages the stem begins to lose its covering. The flowers are red, yellow, or white, though the plant may not flower until 10–20 years old.” (Wikipedia.org) 

Old Man Cactus

And the other amazing part was the Butterfly Exhibit, which was truly wonderful and they had 16 different species over there. Also, I learned that there are over 700 species of butterflies in North America and 326 species were found here in Arizona. 

Again it was an great experience and I recommend it to everyone to visit the Desert Botanical Garden at least once in their life! 

new projectssssss

Well, so I received an email from Estrella Mountain Community College on Monday, and I got accepted for the EMCC student conference, which is on May 2^nd. So I’m really excited for it, and I’m pretty sure that it’s going to be a great experience for me, but on the other hand I’m kind of worry about it because less than a month left to the finals and there are lots of projects and papers to write for the end of semester, and making poster and the conference on top of them makes me more worry. Definitely it’s not a good feeling when I’m thinking about it, but let’s stay positive and say I can survive.

Now I stop complaining and I’m going to talk about my project, or I better say my projects because I will start two new exciting projects next to the old one, which are still related to my allelopathy project and that makes them even more interesting for me. Since the third week of spring semester, almost all these times, I was testing the allelopathy effect on the Phoenix College garden, with different methods, and so far I got some good results. So what I’m going to do in my new projects is, first to grow the bacteria which exist on the soil under the canopy of each plants (Sycamore, Citrus, Oak, Sunflower, and Mesquite), and the second sample from outside the canopy from the similar type of soil and compare them with each other. And, next is identifying the bacteria. I will explain more about them next week, when I’m going to do the actual experiments. Because this week I just got prepare for it and collected the second sample, which was the soil from outside the canopy and let them to get dry during the weekend.

second sample

Back to my old allelopathy project, I supposed to wait for a week and count the germinated seeds. So on Tuesday I opened the wraps and counted all the germinated seed. Everything was going well until I got to the last five petri dishes of the control soil include the chard seeds, and unfortunately three of them had mold all over the dishes and that was killed all the seeds. It was unusual because I never had mold on the whole dish, but it happens. And that made me to redo the test for those three petri dishes with control soil and chard.

My favorite shot of the radish roots

Sycamore soil

Citrus soil

Dragonflies.....

So as I mentioned before, I just started the new method for the allelopathy test last week, which carry out with the soil from under the canopy of each plants (Sycamore, Sun flower, Orange, Oak and Mesquite). Last week I set up 120 petri dishes and filled up all the petri dishes with 30 mL soil of each plant. 

So I started my week with counting the seeds and placed them in the petri dishes that are contain soil, like before each dish should have 25 seeds and I dispersed them randomly in the dishes. Then it was the time to water them. Since we were not sure how much water I need to use for each petri dish, a week before Matt tested couple dishes with different amount of water to find out the perfect and enough amount and he ended up with 10 mL water. After he agreed on the amount of water I kept continue working on my project by watering the petri dishes, while I was water them I found out, that for some of them the 10 mL water wasn’t enough because that amount of water couldn't cover the whole dish and I could see that still some part of the soil was completely dry. I discuss my observation with Matt and he checked them as well. We both knew that the water will spread out in the soil later. But just to be sure about them he suggested me to water the rest of the petri dishes with 12 mL instead of 10 mL, and I can say that it worked perfectly for the rest of them, hopefully the ones that I did at the beginning with 10 mL will be fine, and I’m curious to see if there’s any difference between those and 12 mL dishes. Finally, after I got done with watering, I foiled all of them with parafilm to prevent water evaporation. Now again all I can do is waiting for a week to see the result and counting the seeds that germinated.

petri dishes all set for germination

it seems I'm getting some germination :) 

But guess what!? I still had my results for 50% solution since last week to graph and I was working on them as well, so now that I’m done with it I was thinking to share the results and graphs with you.

Radish germination

Lettuce germination

Chard germination

Carrot germination

Also today in my Biology class, Mr. Schample showed us some amazing pictures of dragonflies, I really like them, so I tried to find them in nytimes, and it seems it not just pictures and there’s an article about dragonflies as well, article “Nature’s Drone, Pretty and Deadly”, which was really interesting for me as well. I didn't want you to miss these amazing pictures and article so I attached the link. (I need to mention that picture 5 is my favorite).

 I hope you all enjoy, please don’t miss it!!!! 

 Nature's Drone, Pretty and Deadly