יומן של BIOL 111 Leafy Greens

Hello everyone!
I am looking forward to see your observations. I hope you are able to get cool pictures of plants around your area. Let me know how that is going!
Daniel

I chose the genus hosta (aka plantain-lily) for my phylogenetic tree. Using OneZoom, I found that it is the most recent common ancestor of species such as the American agave, Ajo lily and Quamosh.

I inputted the Aloe vera species (a.k.a. Aloe Vera) into the phylogeny tree. With this species, three ancestral species are shown to be the most closely related: Aloe nugalensis, Aloe krapohliana (a.k.a. Painted-Leaved Aloe), and the Aloe mossurilensis.

The Aloe vera species I observed has adapted uniquely when compared to my other observations. Due to low water availability in its usual habitat, the Aloe vera species has adapted to contain thick and fleshy leaves in order to accommodate storing large volumes of water for later use.

One of my observations was the grassleaf spurge plant, which is from the Euphorbia genus. Euphorbia plants have a unique adaptation: they produce a milk sap (latex) that is highly toxic and can irritate the skin and eyes. The trait evolved to prevent animals and insects from feeding on it.

One adaptation that is common between all observations is that all the plants have green leaves. This is perhaps not a big surprise, as the theme of our project was "leafy greens". Nonetheless, this is an important adaptation for plants as the reason the leaves are green is that they contain chlorophyll, a pigment found in chloroplasts that allows the plants to capture light energy from the sun and photosynthesize to convert it into chemical energy.