Wednesday, October 12, 2011

My Plant Clipping

For science today we studied plants.  We have have English Ivy growing along the house.  We are learning about other ways that Plants can reproduce other than just seeds.  Our experiment was to take a plant clipping and put it in water and watch it reproduce.  I predict that it will take about 4 months for it to start to develop roots.  I'm wondering what kinds of root systems these plants have. I'm also wondering how many days until it starts to run low on nutrients.  Dad says it has all it needs with just water and sunlight for right now, I'm pretty sure that's untrue.


This a picture of ivy that we found online, we couldn't find any pictures of Ivy clippings in water, so you'll just have to imagine these vines in a canning jar near my window.

4 comments:

Diane Zemke said...

I have grown clippings in water before. Tell us if your hypotheses about how long it will take to get roots and if the plant needs more than just water are true or not when you find out.

You can also get potatoes (if they haven't been treated) and cut them, put in some tooth picks, put them in water, and they will grow into nice plants.

Like the picture.

Aunt Arch said...

Potatoes are probably my favorite plant to grow. When I was in junior high, a potato fell behind the dryer and sprouted through a purple sweater. I sent out really strong root sprouts that wove through the sweater and destroyed it. When you grow potatoes you let them sprout on the counter overnight and then put them in the dirt with the sprouty parts pointing upward. They turn into big plants and if you stick your hand in the dirt underneath you can fish potatoes out of the dirt.

My success with ivy hasn't been as good. Apparently ivy likes to grown downhill. When I tried to make it grow uphill, it wouldn't.

Jonathan said...

Grandma,

Madelyn destroyed our science experiment by knocking the clipping out of the water before we left on vacation. We will be restarting it. Maybe I can convince Dad to use a potato this time instead of a vine. That could be way more cool.

Jonathan said...

Aunt Arch,

We have good luck here because the Ivy grows downhill along the apartment buildings. It grows so well that the lawn company has to gut it back every few months.

I think your story about the sweater is AWESOME. Did you get to eat the potatos?