Liana Hill

Takisha Reece
Biology Period G
May 18, 2018
Wildflower Project Lab Report
Introduction
There are many purposes of the Wildflower Project. One of them is to neatly press and
collect 35 flowers. The flowers should be neatly arranged on the page for viewers to see after it
is completed. Students taking Biology had to learn to identify flowers using Newcomb’s
Wildflower Guide. We used the book to classify different parts of the flower, such as the shape of
the leaf, arrangement of the leaf on the stem, and number of petals, in order to be able to identify
it. The long span of the Wildflower Project made students focus on time management and
organization skills. The collecting of the wildflowers had to spread out over the span of several
months. Cramming this project until the last minute would have given the student, and teacher, a
lot of stress. Most of the collecting for this project was around the campus of Sandy Spring
Friends School and on the campus of Beltsville Adventist School with permission.

Materials
 Paper towels
 Napkins
 An electronic device such as an iPad or computer
 Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide
 Writing utensil such as a pen or pencil
 Three-ring binder
 A camera or phone
 Student ID
 Google Docs
 Google Sheets
 Card stock paper (Grey and white)
 A heavy books such as a dictionary or textbook
 Scotch Spray Mount
 Wildflowers
 Sticky notes

Procedure
1. To start this project, pick a wildflower and identify it.
A. Bring a copy of Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide when hunting for flowers.
B. Use the three digit key code in Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide and count the
number of petals, the arrangement of where the leaves were on the stem, and how
the leaves looked in order to identify the flower.
2. Next, pick the flower at the base along with the attached leaves. If the flower has
a basal leaf, make sure to grab it. The picked flower needs to have leaves, the
stem, and the flower.
3. When pressing the picked wildflower, it needs to be neatly arranged so that the
number of petals and the shape of the leaves are visible.
A. Place the flower between two paper towels and gently press the juice out of the
stem. Write the identification of the wildflower onto the paper towel or a sticky
note and attach it to the paper towel. Place the flower into a very heavy book, I
used a dictionary, and let it sit and dry.
4. All the identifications will need to be organized on an excel spreadsheet to create
easy access later when the labels of the flowers need to be made. I used Google
Sheets to create this spreadsheet.
5. A. To create a spreadsheet for your wildflowers, create eleven columns with the
headings in this specific order; Scientific Name, Common Name, Family Name,
City, County, State, Habitat, Date Collected, ID Book, Page Number, and
Collector.
B. Fill in the required information based on the description of the wildflower in
both the book. The scientific name of the flower will be written in italics in
Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide. The common name and family name will be found
in the description on the flower in Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide. Make sure to
add the location of where you found the wildflower.
6. Repeat steps 1-5 until 35 flowers are correctly identified and put into the excel
spreadsheet.
7. To create a label, a video was provided on Finalsite for students to follow if they
have a PC computer. If we had a MacBook, students meet with their Biology
teachers to learn how to create labels on a MacBook.
A. The video teaches students how to do mail merge on Microsoft Word.
8. Once the wildflowers are dry, they will need to be mounted.
A. Design the layout of the paper that the wildflower needs to be mounted on.
Include the label of the flower onto the paper. I printed my layout onto grey-
colored cardstock. The layout included tick marks to create a border around my
flowers. I pasted the label of a flower beneath the tick marks.
B. Then, I cut white colored cardstock to serve as the background behind the
flower.
C. Once the white cardstock was cut, I glued it to the grey cardstock using Scotch
Spray Mount and smoothed it down. Next I attached the wildflower that matched
the label onto the white piece of cardstock.
D. Repeat Step 8 until all 35 wildflowers are mounted.
9. Place the mounted flower into a plastic sheet and put in the plastic sheet into a
three-ring binder.
 10. Arrange the flowers alphabetically by family name. I placed a divider between
each family and added the family name to the divider.
11. Create a cover sheet for your binder.

Data
(See collected flowers)

Discussion
Because of this project, I learned many things. I learned how to press and identify
wildflowers using Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide and the three digit key code. I learned how to
make labels on Word by using mail merge and worked on my time management skills. During
this project, most of the mistakes included not picking basil leaves with the flowers, incorrectly
identifying flowers, and not taking the photos of the correct parts of a wildflower. I would often
collect a flower and realize that I didn’t have the basal leaf. Then I had to go and search for the
basal leaf to that specific flower. I also had trouble identifying flowers using the three digit key
code. Thankfully, I would go to Teek and she would check all of my flowers to make sure they
were correctly identified. Also, on a few of the photos I took on some wildflowers, I did not
include all the required parts of the wildflower or some of the pictures would come out blurry.
Another problem happened during the mounting. Because of the spray mount glue, my fingers
were sticky and when I attached the flower onto the cardstock, it would get stuck to my fingers
and rip and tear when I tried to peel my fingers off. This made the mounting process very
frustrating.
If I did this project again, I would start earlier with picking the flowers and not wait till
the last minute. Even though I started pretty early and met most of the deadlines, I still had to do
some last minute cramming to perfect the binder. I would also be very careful when mounting
the flowers onto the cardstock. Picking the flowers was the smoothest part of the project. I did
not learn any tricks that helped me during this project, but I did that I needed to bring the
Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide book with me everywhere I went incase there were wildflowers
there. Overall I enjoyed this project, besides mounting the flowers. It was fun to look at all the
different wildflowers and now be able to look back at all the hard work I put into this project.
During this project, I noticed that most of my wildflowers were either found in the woods
or in an open, grassy area. For example, the Bellwort was found in the woods while the Purple
Dead Nettle was found in an open, grassy area. I noticed that all the Violets were found in the
woods. The last thing I noticed was all the scientific names of the different wildflowers were two
words and the first word was capitalized while the second word was not.

Conclusion
Although this is a really long project that requires time management skills, the wildflower
project is worth it in the end because students can look back on this project and see all the hard
work they into this project.
 Claim: The Common Blue Violet was found in the open woods at Beltsville Adventist
School and Sandy Spring Friends School.
Reasoning: The Common Blue Violet likes to grow in moist woods so they can soak up
the moisture from the atmosphere in the woods.
Evidence: The Common Blue Violet, Smooth Yellow Violet, and Pale Violet were all
found in the low, moist woods at SSFS and Beltsville Adventist School.
In what specific ways have Viola wildflowers evolved from their common ancestor? How
do different weather climates affect the evolution of different wildflower species? How does the
area around different wildflower species affect the ecosystem in that area?

Note to Teacher
I would like to thank Takisha Reece and Claire Donahue for helping me in this project. Thank
you Teek for staying late after school to help me identify all my wildflowers and checking to
make sure they are correct. Thank you Claire for helping me understand the process of this
assignment.