Botany Bouquet An Earth Partnership activity
Activity overview A warm-up activity which introduces various plant species from the same or different ecosystems and allows students to use observational, organizational, and taxonomic skills.
Objectives Students will: • use their observational skills • learn how plants differ structurally from one another • increase their understanding of plant diversity • understand plant names and relationships
Subjects covered Science and Language Arts
Grades 1–12
Activity time 30–45 minutes
Season Any
Materials • sample plant cuttings from one or more ecosystems • representative of native plants that grow (or will grow) on your school grounds
Background Purple Pitcher Plant or omakakiiwidaasan (Sarracenia purpurea)
There are almost 7,000 languages spoken around the world. In North America, you can find many different languages, including English, Spanish, Hmong, French, German, Ojibwe, Ho-Chunk, Arikara, Gwich’in, Onondaga, and many others. Scientific names are another language system, which is based on Latin. For a long time scientists were confronted with the challenge that one plant or animal species could have many different names, depending on what language was spoken. This made it difficult for scientists from different parts of the world to talk about their research. In 1758 a Swedish biologist, Carl Linnaeus, proposed that everyone should use the same name to describe a given species and proposed a universal naming system now known as “binomial nomenclature” (bi = two, nomen = name, calo = call, so it trans- lates as “two-name name-calling”). The system gives each species two names, based on a group of living things (“genus”) and a specific descriptor (“species”). Scientific names are always written with the genus capitalized, the species in lowercase, and the whole name in italics or underlined. Species within a particular genus are closely-related. For example, the scientific name for Red Maple is Acer rubrum. “Acer”
means maple, and all maples share many common characteristics. There are at least a dozen different kinds of maples in North America though, so “rubrum,” which means red, helps describe a specific kind of maple. Acer saccharum is Sugar Maple (Acer means maple; saccharum means sugar). Scientific names are helpful for people around the world to communicate with each other about plants, but it is also import-
ant to know what people call plants locally. These descriptors are known as “common” names, because they are the ones that are used more often when people talk to each other about plants. There are many different common names for any one plant species. Common names may differ depending upon geography and culture, but they are all useful ways of referring to the same
source, or spiritual use. The carnivorous Purple Pitcher Plant (common English name; Sarracenia purpurea in Latin) is named omakakiiwidaasan, which means “frog leggings,” describing the tubular shape of the leaf. Black Ash (Fraxinus nigra) is called aagimaak or “snowshoe-making tree.” The edible and annual Wild Rice (Zizania aquatica) is named menomin, which translates into “the good seed.”
plant. For example, Artemisia ludoviciana is known as nookwezigan (“soothing grandmother medicine”) in Ojibwe, because it is used for spiritual purification and as a healing medicine. In English, it is called different descriptive things by different people, too, depending on where they live and how they use the plant: White Sage, Silver Wormwood, Louisiana Sage, Mexican Sage, and Garfield Tea are all names for this same plant. Of course, other languages may have their own names for this plant as well, depending on where it grows, and what languages are spoken there. Native American Ojibwe speakers gave native plants names based on appearance, utility or function, medicinal purpose, food
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