Dissection of a Rose

What I'll be doing:

Today I am going to take one of the roses from my rose garden and dissect it.  Obviously. :P  Roses are very pretty.  This dissection is purely for learning purposes.  So I'm sorry if it isn't very funny.

I will be taking pictures though.  I'll add those in. :)

Things being used:

My dissection kit

A rose

Paper

Glue

Pen

Digital Camera

*Exploring Creation with Botany


*Really old book, but it's nice for experiments such as these.

Procedure:

First I got together all my supplies. After doing so, I reviewed the guide on flowers and began to dissect. I took many pictures along the way. After all my picture taking **genius, I uploaded them to the computer and edited them with a paint program.

**I am no genius when taking pictures, I wish I were though. ;)

First Step: Look Over The Rose:

I studied the whole beauty of the rose at first. It's beautiful orange and yellow petals are very pretty.

The rose has about four inches of stem left. The peduncle or stalk of my rose is green. It has many tiny little immature thorns growing.
Right above the peduncle is a bump that is the receptacle.  The receptacle is part of the peduncle that holds the floral organs. The receptacle of my rose is a bit immature, but you can see it well in the picture.
Other than a few bruised petals, nothing is out of the ordinary.  Time to start cutting.

Second Step: Remove The Sepals

Right above the receptacle are five sepals. The sepals together are called the calyx of the flower. Of my rose's five sepals, two are partially missing. The sepals are the protection for the bud. In my fully bloomed rose the sepals are no longer needed. On some bloomed flowers they die and fall off, that is not the case with roses.

Third step: Removing the Petals

I choose a rose because they are very numerous this time of year and I have a good quantity of them growing in my garden. Sadly the rose is not the best of all flowers to use when dissecting. One of the main reasons will show when we continue to the next few steps.
The petals of the rose are very pretty, but there are many of them growing on this flower. When all the petals are together they are called the Corolla, but when they are separate they are each called petals. :)  Petals make up a Corolla, and a Corolla is made up of petals.
The colourful pattern of the petals alone with it's alluring scent are ways that the flower uses to lead bees and other pollinators to the middle. There the pollinator will find the nectar it wants and gets dusted with pollen. It's a symbiotic relationship. The pollinator gets the nectar it needs while the flower's pollen (which holds the sperm) gets taken to other flowers to reproduce.

All of these petals are very beautiful.

Forth step: The Stamen

The stamen are one of the most interesting parts of the flower. It is the 'male' part. The stamen has two parts, the stalk is the filament, and the little part at the top that makes pollen is the anther. Most flowers have only a few stamen, but the rose has a good number of them. That is another reason why roses are hard to dissect. The rose's stamen are very small, so pictures will be impossible.  I will find a few on the internet and upload them instead.

The pollen that carpets the anther contains the sperm. One half of what flowers need to reproduce. And now off to the other half.

Fifth step: The Carpel:

The Carpel is the entire female part. It consists of the stigmas, styles, ovary, and ovules.  The sticky top of the Carpel is called the stigma. It's sticky so that it catches any pollen that comes from the pollinator. When the pollinator brushes up against the stigma, the sticky residue catches the pollen.

The stigma is the top of the Carpel. It sits above a long tube called the style. The style is the passageway that allows the pollen to get into the ovary where all the ovules (eggs) are safely tucked away.

Sixth step: The Ovary and Ovules

Down down down we go, to the bottom of the Carpel. This is the bump I was talking about. That bump is the ovary. Every flower's ovary contains tiny egg like structures called ovules. The ovules of my rose are very hard to see, but at the end of my report I'll link a few photos of other flowers.

After cutting the ovary in half I found little bits of fuzz. Inside of the mass of fuzz are tiny little ovules. A few dozen.

Here is a picture I found on the internet.  It shows the parts of a rose, that I couldn't get on camera, very nicely.

Image: (c) http://www.backyardnature.net/fl_roses.htm

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And that concludes my report for my rose dissection. Hopefully I'll find an easier flower to do a report on for my Biology teacher. If you decide to do this then it will help you remember the parts of the flower so much better. It's fun too!
If you want an instructional flower dissection for your own use then email me at: IzzyRicochet@gmail.com

Tune in next time when I track down that evil cat that keeps eating my grass.

Adios for now!

The Wondering Student,

Izzy Ricochet