Science Saturday on a Monday: Queen Anne’s Lace
One of my many memories of my grandmother is picking Queen Anne’s Lace in the summertime. We would fill big jars with this pretty wildflower, and often we would put food coloring in the water to see what color the flowers would turn. I never thought we were conducting a science experiment. I was just having fun. While reading a science book I picked up at the library, I found dying Queen Anne’s Lace listed as an experiment.
Dying Queen Anne’s Lace allows you to observe how water is drawn up the stem of the flower. If you do not have Queen Anne’s Lace available to you, you can use white carnations.
What You’ll Need
Mason jars or large glasses -number required is dependent on how many dyes you will use
Scissors
H20
Food Coloring - red and blue work the best
Queen Anne’s Lace - enough to fill each of your jars with 4-5 blooms
What You Will Do
Upon picking your Queen Anne’s Lace, cut each stem on the diagonal to insure optimal water intake.
Put several drops of food coloring in each jar, and fill the jars with enough water that the stems are submerged between 1-2 inches.
Place your flowers in the jars and observe them every few hours. Look closely. You should begin to see faint colored lines appearing up the stem of the flower. In 12- 24 hours you will notice your flower changing colors.
You are witnessing the process of plant transpiration and osmosis. You can use this experiment as an exercise in collecting data. Observe and record if a certain dye travels faster than another. Measure travel on an hourly basis. Use two identical samples and place one indoors and one outdoors. Is one jar producing results faster than the other?
There are lots of ways to have fun with this experiment. When you’re all done you’ll have a bouquet of very pretty Queen Anne’s Lace.
Filed under: Science on July 30th, 2007
This weekend, we were camping at a folk music festival. I went for a walk with my five year old daughter and we picked some Queen Anne’s Lace. I spoke about the experimentation you described and told my daughter that her mother’s mother had been a science teacher and often used Queen Anne’s Lace in her classroom.
It is a wonderful thing to do, a blending of science and art and I hope a lot of readers go out and do this with their kids.
I feel the same way, Aldon. I like to show my kids that if you go below the surface the simplest of things hold great lessons.