Ritika Bal

Biology- Takisha Reece

Lab Write Up

Introduction:

The Wildflower Project was a project that helped you learned better organizational and

time management skills. Though you can pick flowers almost everywhere most of my picking

was either in Martin Luther King Jr Park in Colesville, or my own neighborhood.

Materials​:

❖ Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide

❖ A photo album or a binder

❖ Sheet protectors or sticky pages

❖ Spray adhesive (if using sheet protectors)

❖ Glue sticks

❖ Paper towels

❖ Pens or an ink writing utensil

❖ Heavy books (ie: textbook or dictionary) or a flower press

❖ Laptop or desktop computer

❖ Printer

❖ Google Sheets or Excel

❖ Microsoft Word

❖ Gloves, preferably latex

❖ Extra sheet protectors if needed

❖ Paper in the color black or white.

 ❖ Sticky notes

Procedure:

1. Create a Google Sheets or Excel document

2. Through the A row, put these in, Scientific name, Common Name, Family Name, City,

County, State, Habitat, Date Collected, ID Book, Page Number, and Collector. Habitat is

where ​you ​found the flower. The book’s description does not count. The collector’s name

must be a first and last name.

3. After creating this document, every time you pick a flower, enter the information into

your database.

4. Look around and be attentive

5. If you spot a flower, observe it

6. Use your Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide identification codes on the inside cover of your

book and attempt to use the numbers to correspond with the wildflower’s attributes.

7. When you acquire the keycode identification for your flower, flip a few pages to the front

and go to the table of contents

8. Find your keycode and correspond it to the characteristics next to it.

9. Go to that page number next to your keycode. Most of the time you have to look more

specifically within the keycode.

10. Read through the different flowers and pick which is most like the flower you see

11. *Recommended but not required* Look up the flower common name or scientific name

on google images and see if it corresponds with what you found.

12. Pick the flower after correctly identifying it and make sure you get the basal leaves if

there are any.

13. After picking your flower, make sure to take it to a room at a moderate temperature

14. Get paper towels, amount moderates between how big and how small your flower.

15. Lay the flower flat on the paper towel surface, and position it to the way that you want it

to be pressed.

16. Lay another paper towel on top of it and label the paper towel with the common name

with a ink writing utensil

17. Get your hardcover textbook or dictionary and place your flower gently in between the

pages and close the book. Make sure to take note of where your flower is so you don’t

lose it.

18. Let the flower press for for 1-3 weeks until dry and easily broken. Don’t let it be moist

when you mount it or mold will appear.

19. Enter your data into your Google Sheets database.

20. Repeat steps 4-19 every time you pick a flower.

21. Put on your gloves

22. Take your piece of paper and spray a moderate amount of adhesive to the section you’d

like to place your flower.

23. Place your flower carefully onto the wet adhesive

24. Make sure not to break or mess up the positioning of your flower, most adhesives dry

fairly quickly
25. Set aside and make sure to label it with a sticky note with the common name on it to not

get it mixed up with other flowers.

26. Repeat 21-25 every time you want to mount a flower

27. *With any Apple laptop, this mode of making labels will not work.* To create your

labels, go to your completed database and download it as a ​Microsoft Excel ​file

28. Open a blank Microsoft Word document

29. Click ​Mailings​ and select ​Start Mail Merge

30. Select ​Step by Step Mail Merge Wizard

31. When you select that, a popup will show in the right side of the document. There are

options under ​Select Document Type​, select the ​Labels ​option

32. Click ​Next: starting document ​on the bottom of the Mail Wizard

33. After clicking next, you should see the subtitle, ​Change Document Layout ​and select

Label options ​which is underneath

34. A popup on your screen should show up with the title ​Label Options​. Around the

midsection of the popup there’s a subtitle named ​Label Information ​underneath that

there’s a drop down options list. Select the option ​Avery US Letter

35. There’s a list of ​Product Numbers ​underneath this list and you should select ​5395

Self-Adhesive Name Badges. ​After this, click ​ok.

36. Select ​Next: Select recipients ​on the bottom of the Mail Wizard

37. Under the subtitle ​Use an existing list​ select ​Browse ​highlighted in blue, this is where

we’ll find the data table we saved as a ​Microsoft Excel ​document.

38. A popup should show up, scroll through your files until you find your database.
39. Select it and click ​Open

40. Another popup should show up and it’s title is ​Select Table​. Since we only have one

table it’ll be selected.

41. Check the box at the bottom right corner of the popup that says ​First row of data

contains column headers

42. Select ​Ok

43. Another popup should show up titled ​Mail Merge Recipients​. All rows on your database

are selected. Deselect the flowers you are not planning to use in your final project and

deselect the empty rows at the bottom of this popup.

44. Select ​Ok

45. On the bottom of the ​Mail Wizard ​select ​Next: Arrange your labels

46. You should now see ​New Record ​all over your document with the exception of the top

left section on your document.

47. Before completing the next step make sure you go to ​Layout ​and make all of your

spacings are at ​0 pt

48. In this blank section of your document you will type, put a colon, and return after these

phrases: Scientific name: , Common Name: , Family Name: , City: , County: , State: ,

Habitat: , Date Collected: , ID Book: , Page Number: , Collector:

49. After this, select ​Mailings​ again and find ​Insert Merge Field

50. You should see all of your subtopics there and you should click the space after the colon

and select the merge field corresponding to what you did in ​Step 48

51. After doing this for every title, select ​Update All Labels
 52. For Scientific name’s ​Merge Field ​select it and make it italicized. Select ​Update All

Labels ​again.

53. Select ​Next: Preview Your Labels ​and you can click the front facing arrow to see how

your labels are organized.

54. Select ​Next: Complete The Merge ​and now you may print your completed labels

Discussion:

This project helped me learn organizational skills and the ability to plan things out so I

wouldn’t procrastinate. Hearing all of my fellow classmates stressed over this project due to a

significant amount of procrastination made me feel proud of myself doing most things ahead of

time.

Sometimes I did feel that rush because of slight procrastination but overall with this

project since you can’t really procrastinate because flowers are growing and dying every day and

different ones pop up every month. There were a few mistakes with not asking as many

questions as i could’ve and a lot of times I did procrastinate with flower picking and I had to go

on spontaneous neighborhood walks and park trips to find new flowers. Even trespassing on

private property (my mom made me).

If I were to do anything differently I’d procrastinate less and start the project a little

earlier to get a wider variety of flowers and maybe some that people wouldn’t have now in the

spring. I really was happy about the amount of collaborating that was happening. I know that me

and a few of my friends went on wildflower walks during seminar, and lunch, and activity

period.
 Everyone was helping each other, and people were picking for each other. It really helped

to have a lot of peers doing the same thing so we could help each other out. There weren’t many

tricks I learned except for the way to press flowers that were more moist that Takisha Reece

demonstrated in class. I did enjoy the semblance of community and cooperation with this project

but everyone was stressed and i’m fairly positive that most people weren’t too thrilled about

doing this project.

This project overall was an amazing learning experience and it did help me learn how to

self advocate for myself more and I learned how great it is to collaborate with other people and

help others prosper while I was prospering myself.

Note to teacher:

During the summer my family and I are deciding whether to go to Hawaii or Canada. My

mom really wants to go to Canada and see Niagara Falls for the second time but my dad wants to

go to Hawaii since we never have before. We’re leaning more towards Canada since it’s easier to

get there and it’ll take a shorter amount of time since both of my siblings are really busy with

work and figuring out their lives during the summer. We’re still teetering over it though. I hope

you have a great summer with Teekette, Teekeroonie and Mini Teek with a lot of family fun! :)