Fern journal

Fern Journal

You will add your first entry to your Blackboard fern journal.

Start with the date of observation.

1. Add a photo of your dish (with your sticker on its lid) on a white background.

The photo of your dish should be embedded and visible without the instructor needing to click a link to open it. Here are instructions for adding a photo from a file saved on your computer:

This linked video about inserting images is helpful and less than two minutes. It is for a discussion board, but it works for journals too. This linked journal help page from Blackboard explains aspects of journals.

Save your image on your computer and upload it to the "Fern Journal". To do this in the Blackboard Journal entry, click on the button "Insert/edit Image" bottom row, 3rd from left,

. Browse you computer to find and insert your image into your journal.. Drag the corners of the image to adjust the image size to something reasonable to view.

2. Description of your dish

Look at the Blackboard page "Fern Dish Images" in the daily folder. Examine the first two images, so you can see what gametophytes look like. Next describe the status of the gametophytes. To better see inside, you can turn the dish on its side and tap it, hopefully dislodging water from the lid. We will wait longer to actually open them to minimize contamination.

• In your description, note whether there are bright green dots on the surface of the agar (each one is a gametophyte)?
• If so, about how many - if there are a few, count them. Most dishes have many. If there are more than a few, estimate.
• Also estimate about what proportion of the surface of the agar is covered with gametophytes.
• Look for a gametophyte on its own. Use your ruler through the lid to estimate its diameter. On our rulers, the numbered lines are centimeters. The small lines within each centimeter are millimeters - there are 10 millimeters to the centimeter. If the gametophyte is smaller than a single small interval on your ruler, estimate how much of a millimeter it spans (for example, if it spans half, that would be 0.5 millimeters). The measurement will be hard to make through the lid, so it's okay if it's just an estimate.
• It is hard to prevent contamination, so many of your dishes likely have some fungi or mold. Describe this too: Are there discolored portions of the petri dish? If so, what color, and what fraction of the dish appear to be colored? If there is a dark green rough surface covering part of the dish, this is a mold or fungus, not gametophytes. We will hope that even with contamination, some gametophytes will survive.

Check the seal on your dish. If the waxy seal (Parafilm) is intact, leave the dish as it is. If it has come loose, try to re-seal it. Also, put the dish into a sealed plastic bag to help retain moisture. Put the dish back in it's bright home.

3. Description of magnified image of gametophytes:

• Look at the bottommost image on the Blackboard page "Fern Dish Images" in the daily folder. This shows the fern gametophytes magnified through a dissecting microscope. You can see a few spores - the small round structures that give rise to gametophytes. You can also see about 15 - 20 gametophytes. Examine them, starting with the smallest one and then looking at progressively larger ones. Based on this comparison, describe the pattern of growth - in what direction(s) does growth occur when they are young, and then how does it change. You can compare what you see with the life cycle on page 157 of your text. Your description should be 2 - 4 sentences long.

Supplementary images to share with students