Botany 100

Jack-in-a-Pulpit

For the summer, I am currently taking Botany 100 class, Survey of Botany. It is a pretty exciting class and I personally think that it will provide me with the valuable knowledge about this world of His creation. It is a 3 weeks course in the Summer semester (14 days with the Memorial Day out of the calendar).

It is the first day of summer semester and we all already felt the heat. Gosh. It is almost as hot as Malaysia now. Nevertheless, the first day started out just fine, though I wouldn't say it was smooth. A poorly ventilated lecture hall with no air conditioner and a little bit of confusion with the discussion section, thank god nothing really horrible had happened today. As we progressed through the day, it got better. We moved into a larger, air conditioned hall and we performed a outdoor experiment instead of being bored to death in the lecture hall.

We went out to a nearby 'forest' next to lake Mendota for our laboratory activity. For the experiment, we had to choose a 20x20 meters of forest ground as our case study and locate a plant called Jack-in-a-Pultip. The forest was thick with short herbaceous plant. It was so thick that you almost can't see the ground. It was pretty adventurous and challenging navigating through the forest as we cannot step on any of the plants. On top of locating the Jack-in-a-Pultips, we have to record the height and identify the gender. Pretty interesting for a first day. And plus, we have laboratory activity everyday. Hooray for that!

One thing I starting to like about this course is that the lecturer will give the actually plant that we are discussing in class to everyone, everyday. That means we get to learn and keep a plant everyday. All 13 of them! (14 minus the last day which is the final) I like the hands-on element of this class. I am planning to keep all of my plants and build a garden on my balcony. Just like my very own real-life Zen Garden. hahaha. (reference: Plant vs Zombie)

Zen Garden

As from now on, I am going to make this blog a place to write casual journal/notes on this class. Just for the fun of it. And it is also a way to keep me interested while mengulangkaji-ing this course. :)