PHYTOPIA Activity Handbook | English

ARTWORK

Dear PHYTOPIAN,

Welcome to the beautiful and bizarre world of plants! We hope you have enjoyed our exhibits, attended our lectures, participated in our workshops and have come away with a rich understanding of the myriad ways in which plants animate our lives.

This activity handbook is an accompaniment to our digital exhibition PHYTOPIA, and we hope that through these puzzles, activities and DIY experiments, you will gain an appreciation for these dynamic and enduring organisms.

Learn more about how various living and non-living factors interact with each other by building a self-sustaining ecosystem. Understand how preserved plant specimens are an integral part of scientific study and cultural heritage by preparing herbarium sheets. Create your own blends of natural perfumes and paint the town red by extracting colours from fruits and vegetables!

Experience, experiment and enjoy these activities that Science Gallery Bengaluru has put together for you. Don’t forget to share pictures of your creations with us on social media by tagging us, and use the hashtag #ExperimentWithSGB and #PHYTOPIA to see what other people have created!

Warmly,

The Science Gallery Bengaluru Team

OUR NEED FOR HERBARIA

WHAT ARE HERBARIA AND HOW ARE THEY USEFUL?

I hide myself within my flower, That wearing on your breast, You, unsuspecting, wear me tooAnd angels know the rest. I hide myself within my flower, That, fading from your vase, You, unsuspecting, feel for me Almost a loneliness.

- Emily Dickinson

Before she began writing poems that would grip the imagination of the world, Emily Dickinson undertook an activity that would involve a different approach to composition and observation - that of cataloging, classifying and pressing flowers.

Emily Dickinson started studying botany at the age of nine, but it wasn’t until she enrolled at Mount Holyoke that she approached the subject with scientific rigour. Inspired by her school’s headmistress and founder, Mary Lyon, who was a trained botanist, Emily created a substantial plant collection when she was just thirteen years old. She wrote to a friend, “Have you made a herbarium yet? I hope you will if you have not, it would be such a treasure to you.” This collection consisted of sixty-six pages, on which there are 424 specimens and all but sixty of them were documented with their scientific names. This herbarium has been digitized and is housed at Harvard University’s Houghton Library, it is a collection arranged not according to any strict classification but with an eye for symmetry and balance. All 66 pages can be seen at the Harvard Libraries website.

https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:4184689$1i

What are herbaria?

Why is it considered a critical resource in the study for biodiversity, ecology and evolutionary studies?

A herbarium is a collection of preserved plant specimens that are mounted on sheets of paper. It is like a library; it contains an annotated collection but this information is stored in a biological form -- as pressed, and dried plant specimens. The mounted plant specimens are also labelled with their scientific names, and they are used as reference material in describing different taxonomic groups. It provides scientists and researchers with hands-on access to plant specimens, which are archived in such a manner that major morphological characters (both sides of the leaves and floral structures) are visible. Apart from the family, genus and species name the key information in a herbarium is when and where it was collected, and by whom.

These specimens are collected where they are growing in nature, over a broad geographic range so that the variation in individual species from different habitats can be documented. This way, herbarium specimens also aid research on variation at the DNA level, genome structure and gene expression. Herbaria also preserve a historical record of change in vegetation over time, as some plants become extinct in one area. In such cases, the specimens can represent the only record of the plant’s original distribution.

Carl Linneaus, a botanist, zoologist and physician who formalised the binomial nomenclature (naming of species by giving a name composed of two parts like Homo Sapiens) began his research into the classification of organisms through a detailed study of plant morphology. The specimens in his herbarium were arranged according to their sexual reproductive organs -- stamens and pistils. This old classification is the basis of modern science we do today. His herbarium, which contains over four thousand species, is currently held at the Linnean Society in England.

http://linnean-online.org/linnaean_herbarium.html

PRESSING FLOWERS

A GUIDE FOR BEGINNERS

Here’s how you can get started with this simple excercise with which you can make beautiful art or a collection of herbarium sheets according to the plants growing in your garden.

Follow the instructions and share your creations with us using the hashtags #ExperimentWithSGB and #Phytopia.

THICK PAPER OR CARDS

BOOKS AND NEWSPAPER A PEN

ACID FREE LIQUID GLUE

YOU WILL NEED WHAT TO DO

• In your own garden or a spot where you have permission, carefully pick a selection of flowers. Try to pick flowers that have been dried out in the sun as wet flowers are likely to catch mold. Be gentle with the plant and try not to pick too many.

• Open a book and line it with a newspaper. Place your flowers on the page. Close the book carefully and weigh it down. You can place heavy books on top of it to increase the weight. Store these specimens in a warm and dry place. Make sure to check on them occasionally.

• Once these specimens have dried completely, you can create a flower collection or add them to a beautiful card. Use glue to mount it on a card.

TOP TIPS FOR SELECTING AND PRESSING FLOWERS

• Not all specimens are easy to press. Some, such as orchids, take a long time to lose moisture and tend to go mouldy.

• If you are using a plant with a large stem, make sure to use a tissue paper to absorb the extra moisture on the first day. Place the tissue paper in such a way that it is an extra layer outside of the newspaper.

• A newspaper works well for covering the specimen as it is fairly absorbent and has antifungal properties.

• Balance the weight of the plant equally on the sheet as any part of the plant that is left in free air will shrivel up.

• Don’t use tape because it might discolour the specimen, and fall off the card.

• Depending on what you’re pressing and how long it takes to dry, it can take from a few days to a few weeks for your specimen to dry completely. Make sure that you’re gentle with the specimen when you’re moving it as dried plants tend to be quite brittle.

HOW TO PREPARE A HERBARIUM SHEET

• It’s not only flowering specimens that can be pressed - ferns, moss and even seaweed are all mounted on herbarium sheets in collections. Choose a specimen that you would like to preserve.

• Though the method of preparing specimens is somewhat similar, make sure that you lay them out in such a way that all their features are seen clearly. For example, collect and arrange more than one leaf (both laid in opposite fashion) so that both sides of the leaf can be seen. Each side of it may contain features that are important while studying a plant.

• Add a label with all the relevant information. Data about where it was collected, by whom and the name of the plant can help transform the specimen from being purely aesthetic to scientifically valuable.

With appropriate care and attention, pressed specimens of plants can last for hundreds of years. Herbaria and preserved plant specimens serve an important role in expanding scientific knowledge, and preserving cultural heritage.

THE BUBBLE OF LIFE

THE WONDER THAT IS A TERRARIUM

An ecosystem is a geographical area where plants, animals, and other organisms along with the climate, weather and landscape, work together to form life. Ecosystems are made of living (biotic) and non-living (abiotic) parts, which influence and shape it. Biotic parts include plants, animals, insects and algae, whereas abiotic parts include rocks, light and temperature.

Every part of an ecosystem is influenced by another part. A change in temperature can affect what plants grow in a certain area, which in turn can affect the animals that feed on this plant. The animals will either have to move to another area if they cannot find this plant or they would have to perish.

Ecosystems can be as small as a tide pool or as large as an ocean. The whole surface of the earth is a series of ecosystems connected through larger biomes. Forests, jungles, deserts, rivers and oceans are all biomes.

But every biome is different in that it is shaped by an interaction of biotic and abiotic factors that is unique to its geographic location. Even similar sounding biomes can have completely different ecosystems. For example, the biome of Thar desert in India is very different from the biome of the Gobi desert in China and Mongolia.

Biomes also change as climate changes; hundreds of millions of years ago the entire Antarctica was carpeted with greenery and ten thousand years ago parts of North Africa were lush landscapes cut with flowing rivers.

Understanding how these conditions can help plants grow, he invented the Wardian case which paved the way for successfully transporting live plants across the world.

The wardian case was an early prototype for what is now called a terrarium. By building and observing a terrarium, one can understand how abiotic and biotic factors exist synchronously in the world to drive life even in a micro-environment.

But did you know that you could recreate a micro-environment inside a glass jar with some plants and sunlight? In 1892, a British doctor and naturalist Nathaniel Ward inadvertently invented a glass and wooden box where plants not only grew, but thrived.

He placed a moth cocoon he had collected into a sealed glass bottle with fern fronds and some soil. Condensation formed on the inside walls of the glass, and the water slowly dripped down again to the soil, while sunlight was able to shine through the glass allowing the plant to grow. The plant was able to survive untouched for three years.

Wardian Case

Wardian Case

Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward. Lithograph by R. J. Lane after J. P. Knight Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images

HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN TERRARIUM

A terrarium is a self-sustaining ecosystem, where all the inhabitants (plants, animals, microorganisms) survive without constant care and intervention. Making your own plant terrarium is not that hard but you need to understand the process, and once you get a grip on it you will realise that terrariums exist at the beautiful intersection of art and science. All it requires is a basic understanding of biology, botany and as with all creative endeavours --a truckload of patience. Before we begin, it is important to keep in mind that self-sustaining ecosystems work on a conservation basis; nothing goes in and nothing comes out.

YOU WILL NEED

GLASS CONTAINER WITH A LID

SMALL PEBBLES

CHARCOAL

NATURAL SOIL

PLANTS AND WATER

WHAT TO DO

• Pick a glass container that is free of any residue. Do not clean it with any chemicals or bleach. Establish the substrate of your terrarium by lining the bottom of the container with small pebbles. The pebbles will allow the water to collect at the bottom of the terrarium without evaporating quickly. Add a layer of charcoal to filter the impurities in the water. This will help keep the ecosystem clean and healthy.

• On top of this layer, add enough potting soil to allow the roots of the plants to grow. Natural soil contains enough nutrients and microorganisms necessary for decomposition such as fungi, and bacteria. However, you can add large earthworms to enhance the quality of the soil.

• If you’re new to building terrariums, start with small plants. If you’ve just bought them from the nursery, trim some of the long roots, water them and place them in the terrarium in holes that you’ve dug out with a small spoon. Pack the soil around the plant well. Seal the container with a lid.

• Place the terrarium in a place where there is ample sunlight. Keep checking on the terrarium. If the plants seem too dry, move the terrarium to a place which is more shaded. Add a little bit of water to help the plants grow. But if the plants are too moist, lift the lid and allow the terrarium to dry out for a bit.

THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND

• Though succulents and cacti make for incredible looking and low maintenance terrariums, they need a different type of soil to grow. They need much less water since they’ve adapted to grow in arid regions, hence the soil you place them in must have excellent drainage. Adding coarse sand to the soil will help it drain well, so that roots of your succulent do not rot.

• When you put the plants in the soil make sure not to crowd the terrarium with too many plants. If you want to use many different varieties, place them in different containers. When there are too many plants competing for nutrients in a limited space, most of them will rot and die.

• You can even experiment on how abiotic factors such as water and sunlight have an influence on plants by creating three identical terrariums and growing them under different conditions. Make your variable (the thing you are going to test) the amount of water, and add different measures of water in the terrariums. Close the lid and watch the terrariums over several days to see which amount of water made the best environment for your plants.

DESIGN YOUR OWN TERRARIUM HERE!

Share your creations with us on social media tagging @SciGalleryblr and using the hashtag #ExperimentWithSGB and #Phytopia.

SCENT AND COLOUR

HOW PLANTS ADVERTISE THEMSELVES (TO POLLINATORS!)

While taking a stroll through a garden, the one thing that never ceases to delight is the spectacular range of colours and smells emanating from flowers. Apart from being a timeless motif in visual art, and a recurring subject of romantic poetry, flowering plants appear in countless shades and variations to attract pollinators. As pollinators travel from flower to flower, they collect and deposit pollen, fertilising plants.

Plant fossils suggest that they were simple structures without much pigment. Research shows that colour schemes of flowering plants evolved in such a way as to attract pollinators present in that geographical area. While there are thousands of species of bees around the world, they all share a common visual system: their eyes are sensitive to ultraviolet, blue and green wavelengths of the light spectrum. The flowers as perceived by ultraviolet-sensitive visual systems. Some flowers have ultraviolet nectar guides; these guides are like signposts which are invisible to the human eye but tell the bees where to find nectar. However, bees cannot view things as clearly as us; they have less visual acuity or clarity of sight. But to counteract this, plants - being the extraordinary organisms that they are have evolved to attract bees and other insect pollinators with their scent.

Flowers expel a diverse range of scent molecules in the air for different purposes. They use their scent to attract pollinators, communicate other plants and even lure in prey. Although flowers can be similar in colour and variety, there are no two floral scents which are exactly the same because of the large variety of volatile compounds which guides a pollinator to its reward, which is nectar. Some flower odours are made up of a brew of more than 100 compounds. These compounds are made up of tiny molecules, which evaporate into the air where the olfactory organs of a pollinator can sense the odour. Some flowering plants are generalists and use their scents to attract a host of pollinators while others specifically release a particular scent to attract one type of pollinator.

A basic understanding of the way plants are pollinated by insects, birds and bats can help us to reach the humble conclusion that perhaps all the brilliant colours and enticing scents of flowers weren’t just made for us. But what have we made of them?

https://theconversation.com/plants-use-advertising-like-strategies-to-attract-bees-with-colour-and-scent-92673

SCENTS

History shows us that more than a thousand years ago, Ibn Sina, a Persian physician discovered how to distill roses into aromatic oils. He began by placing the flowers in a heated chamber to create a vapor of scented oil and water. After the steam condensed he collected the oil that floated on top of this watery mixture.

In some parts of the world, oil is used as carriers of scents while in modern-day perfumes alcohol, which disperses more quickly, is used as the carrier medium. But as in ancient times, expensive perfumes still use natural products like essential oils gathered from fruits, spices and flowers, while the cheaper ones are made with artificial chemicals.

DYES

Apart from harnessing flower power to make heady scents, humans have used plants, bugs and minerals to make dyes for centuries. Before 1856, when a British chemist named William Perkins accidentally formulated the first synthetic dye -mauveine-- while trying to find the cure for malaria, harvesting natural resources for dyes was very common. Indigo is one such deep and rich dye.

The word indigo comes from the Latin for “India”, as the dye was originally imported to Europe from India. Indigo was considered very important because to make anything blue, you needed indigo, an organic compound found most notably in the genus Indigofera (from India or South America). Until Indigo dye was synthesized in Europe in 1882, a species of the Asian Indigofera was a huge cash crop wherever it could be grown. The jeans you’re wearing today likely uses indigo dye.

Indigo plant (Indigofera tinctoria L.): flowering stem with separate flower and fruit segments. Coloured engraving by J.J. or J.E. Haid, c.1750, after G.D. Ehret. Credit: Wellcome Collection

Indian perfume sellers. Gouache drawing.

Credit: Wellcome Collection

HOW TO MAKE NATURAL PERFUMES

Essential oils carry the life force of a herb, spice or a plant. You can use them to make soaps, massage oils or body lotions. Here’s how to make natural essential oils, which you can mix with water and spritz on your clothes, and in your room for a refreshing fragrance. For this process, we will be using rose petals but you can use any plant whose scent you like.

YOU WILL NEED

JOJOBA OIL OR OLIVE OIL

ONE CUP OF ROSE PETALS

MORTAR, PESTLE AND DARK GLASS JAR

WATER AND A MESH SIEVE

WHAT TO DO

• Bring four cups of water to boil, then remove from heat

• Pour one cup of jojoba oil in a jar

• Set the glass jar in a pan full of hot water. The hot water will help pull the scent from the petals

• Crush one cup or rose petals using a mortar and pestle

• Place the crushed petals in the jar and cover it with a lid. Once the pan of water cools, you can move the jar to another place

• Leave the oil and petals undisturbed for at least twenty-four hours. You can allow this mixture to rest for up to seven days, depending on how strong you want the scent to be

• Use the mesh sieve to separate the oil from the crushed petals and strain it into a glass dark glass jar.

• Repeat this process for however long you want until you are left with the desired amount. You can even experiment with the soak time while making the essential oil. Allow the first batch to soak for at least 24 hours and the second batch to remain in the oil for at least 72 hours.

HOW TO MAKE NATURAL DYES

Did you know that you could create dyes at home with just a vegetable and fruit scraps? Here’s how to get started with that process -

YOU WILL NEED

FRUIT AND VEGETABLE SCRAPS

WATER AND SMALL SAUCEPANS

GLASS CONTAINER

VINEGAR AND SALT

WHAT TO DO

• Collect about one cup of chopped fruits and vegetables that you will need for making your natural homemade dyes

• Add the scraps to a saucepan and cover it with twice as much water. Simmer the scraps in the water over medium heat at least for an hour

• Turn off the heat and let the water cool down to a room temperature

• Take a glass container, and strain the dyed water into it. You have your natural dye!

If you want to use this dye to colour a fabric, you will need a fixative. For fruit dyes, simmer the fabric in four cups of water and 1/4 cup salt. For vegetable dyes, simmer in four cups of water and one cup of vinegar. Then boil for one hour. Once you’re done boiling, rinse the fabric in cold water. Once this process is complete, let it soak in the natural dye until it gets to the desired shade.

You can create your own palette using various colours derived from different fruits, vegetables and berries -

• Red: Beetroot, raspberries, strawberries, Red onion skins, cherries

• Orange: Carrots, orange peels, onions

• Yellow: Lemon peels, yellow apple peels

• Green: Spinach, green apple peels

• Blue: Red cabbage, blueberries, blackberries

• Purple: Red onion skins, raspberries, blackberries

• Pink: Beetroot, raspberries, blackberries

EXPERIMENT WITH YOUR COLOURS HERE!

Share your creations with us on social media tagging @SciGalleryBlr and using the hashtags #ExperimentWithSGB and #Phytopia

HOW DID YOU MAKE YOUR PERFUMES?

Here’s a handy way to keep a record of all your aromatic creations. Write down your perfume’s name, the ingredients you used, how it smelled, how much you made and more!

PERFUME 1

Name: Name:

Components: Components:

PERFUME 2

Color: Color:

Volume:

Volume:

Strength: Strength:

PERFUME 3

Name: Name:

Components: Components:

PERFUME 4

Color: Color:

Volume: Volume:

Strength: Strength:

KITCHEN PHARMACY

HERBS BEYOND THE KITCHEN

Plants have been used to produce medicines since ancient times. We have extracted active ingredients from them to produce life-saving medicines in modern laboratories. Today, there are over 100 active ingredients derived from plants for use as drugs and medicines.

Become a kitchen detective and use these labels as starting points to search for the active ingredients in the ingredients you use to cook and work out how they might be good for you. Print and use these labels on the jars as reminders for when you are in the kitchen.

A good place to start looking ishttps://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/ethnobotany/medicinal/ingredients.shtml

HERB NAME

Scientific name ~ COMMON NAME(S) ACTIVE INGREDIENT(S) USE(S)

TURMERIC

Curcuma longa ~ HALDI CURCUMINE ANTISEPTIC

GINGER

_______________________ ~ _______________________

SHOGAOL, GINGEROL

CLOVE

Syzygium

Cinnamomum cassia ~ ___________________________

CINNAMALDEHYDE, EUGENOL

Camellia sinensis ~ _____________________ PROANTHOCYANIDINS, CATECHINS, THEANINE

Foeniculum vulgare ~ SAUNF

aromaticum ~LAUNG, LAVANGA

PHYTOPIA CROSSWORD

HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW YOUR PLANTS?

Do you want to try your hand at something quick and fun, but not get it dirty by digging through dirt or peeling off glue from your fingers? Do you want to establish bragging rights about how quickly you could solve a puzzle or just befuddle your friends with obscure facts about the plant world? Then this plant-themed crossword puzzle is just the right thing for you!

Most of the answers to these clues are quite straightforward, but some of them are slightly more cryptic than others. Once you’ve found all the answers, post an image of the crossword on social media with the hashtag #PhytopiaPlantCrossword and tag us @SciGalleryblr, and your completed crossword might just feature on our social media. Stay tuned for the answers; they will be posted at the end of the exhibition!

DOWN:

1. Fatty _____ / Tree of life (6)

2. Darting out of pipes to eat a plumber (7,5)

3. Fruit masquerading as a vegetable (6)

4. Vermin tango inside this herb (4)

5. Noah’s Ark of plant diversity (8,5)

7. Hear an owl cry about water suckers (5)

8. A super villain who can leave you itching (6,3)

ACROSS:

4. Mick Jagger gathers no _______ (4)

6. Sunday brunch cocktail (6)

9. X-rated emoji (8)

10. Quenches its thirst once every two years (6)

11. A can of this makes the weakest sailor tough (7)

12. You can’t make it on a rainy day (3)

13. A picture of lust, I hear, is a treatise on making starch (14)

SCIENCE GALLERY BENGALURU PHYTOPIA

@SCIGALLERYBLR

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS HANDBOOK, PLEASE DO SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA #EXPERIMENTWITHSGB #PHYTOPIA