Flower dissection Apologia Botany

Usually when I hear the word dissection, I think of animals.  We have dissected a few unfortunate animals that did not make it to the other side of the road in time, a cow's eye when we were working on a Helen Keller unit study, and a frog for no real reason other than I picked it up from the homeschooling convention, and I figured since we were going to be cutting anyway and the frog was already dead, why not?  In case you missed those click here and here.

But this week, we dissected something different, a flower.  We just finished up lesson 3 in Apologia Botany.  So here is what a flower dissection looks like.

First you need to find a flower that looks similar to this flower.  Roses also work well for this dissection.

Turn your flower upside down and look for the green sepals.  The sepals protect the developing flower.  Together, the sepals are collectively called the calyx.

The sepals (calyx) have all been removed and the bud is now exposed.  All flowers have male and female parts but not the way humans do.

The next step was to remove all the petals which collectively are called the corolla.  This is a view of the bulb cut lengthwise in half to show the carpal or female part of the flower.  The carpal is attached to the center of the flower.

The little stalks that look similar are called the stamen.  These stamen are the male part of the flower.

Here is the notebooking page.  The various parts of the flowers that were dissected were glued into the appropriate section.  This is a great way to review what has been learned.

This dissection was really fun and educational!  It was also far less bloody, and there was no pungent odor as with the other dissections we have done.  You can find a co-op manual here that Mrs. Fulbright has provided for free if you are working with a group.