Lab Meeting Time: 3:00 to 4:50, Monday and Wednesday - Room 423 LSII
Instructor: Daniel Nickrent; Office: Rm. 1005 LSIII. Phone: 453-3223
Lab. Objectives:
Lab Exams: Three practical exams (10% each) will be given during the semester covering laboratory topics. These exams will consist of ca. 60 questions that relate to plants you have seen and dissected in lab. Instead of fresh material, high quality color photographs will be projected. You will be given ca. 2 minutes to answer each question which is generally ample time.
Lab Quizzes and Drawings. Short quizzes may be given during lab. periods. These will cover material seen in the previous lab as well as the current lab (to ensure you come to lab prepared). In general, most of the points (that make up this 10%) derive from you drawings.
Class Projects. 10% of your grade will be determined from your class project. Two options are available: 1) a traditional plant collection and 2) a digital plant collection. Details about the traditional plant collection are given in your lab manual. It should consist of six flowering plants taken from six different orders (APG system of classification). They can be obtained anywhere (i.e. not just from Southern Illinois). Rare and endangered plants will NOT be accepted. This includes all orchids or any plants collected from an official Illinois Nature Preserve. Herbarium paper will be provided for you. All collections are due during the last scheduled laboratory. Unless you request that the specimens be returned at the end of the semester, you collections will become the property of SIUC Department of Plant Biology and some may be incorporated into the SIU Herbarium.
Instead of a traditional plant collection, you are given the option
to prepare a digital plant collection. This will involve making
digital photographs documenting the floral and fruit morphology of
three Southern Illinois plants. The Olympus stereo microscope and
digital camera setup in the laboratory will be used to make macro
photographs (see separate handout for instructions on using this
equipment). Digital photographs of the plants in the field are
also welcome, but at present you must provide your own digital camera
for this. All photographs prepared for this class project will be
uploaded (by DLN) to the PhytoImages web site, complete with collection
locality information. See class handouts for more details on
preparing your data for this project.
Additional Purchases: You will need to
purchase and
bring to lab:
Fresh and Pickled Plant Material. Whenever possible, we will strive to provide fresh representatives of the various families for dissection. Some will be native plants found outside and some will come from the Plant Biology greenhouse. You are encouraged to visit the PLB greenhouse to review and enjoy! Some fixed material will be used when fresh is not available.
Some Rules: