Examining flowers and meeting new people!

I am so terrible with this whole blog thing so now I have to backtrack... Dr. Hanson Andreas, Millie, and me all go out to look at one of the trees they have growing outside the herbarium (the room we're working in) and observe the different stages of flowers and seed pods. In order to do this, we had to collect samples of all the different growing stages of them both and examine them under a microscope.

What I think is funny is Dr. Hanson takes us out to the tree, explains that she wants us to study the various development stages of the flowers and pods, tells us to gather samples and then come back to the herbarium to examine them, and just leaves us! None of us knows that much information about flowers, so that meant we had to do a lot of research before we were to examine them. That was fun... (Not so much) but it's good for us to learn how to be completely independent like that and make sure we stay on task.

Our first couple flowers looked like a murder scene (without the blood of course.) Since we didn't know what exactly she wanted us to look at and write down for observations, we tried to look at everything! That's probably why it took us almost 2 full days to complete all of our samples. Even though we did have quite a few to examine, it probably shouldn't have taken us that long, but we definitely did a thorough job on our observations! We're all pretty proud!

All of our flower samples

Millie organizing the developmental stages

I've never looked at a flower under a microscope, so this was definitely a new experience! They look so different when you look at each flower structure individually and up close! Dr. Hanson is going to have each of us have our own project dealing with the plants in the greenhouse, so she wanted us to practice the procedure on other plants before we get down to it. This tree has many flowers and seed pods, but the ones in the greenhouse have a few, if any at all. Due to the shortness of flowers, we have to know exactly what we're doing when we dissect and examine because we might only be able to do it once. (We definitely needed the practice!) I was so happy! While dissecting my first flower, I was able to spot both pollen on the anthers and some ovules! They look extremely cool under a microscope! With one of the microscopes in the lab, we're able to capture pictures.

You can see some of the pollen on the anthers
(it's the crystal structures)

More pollen, but on the stigma

These are the ovules inside the stigma

This was the coolest thing to see. I've never seen flower ovules before, so this was an amazing sight to see! These pictures were taken on a very strong magnification because neither the ovules or the crystal-looking pollen can be seen by the naked eye. In order to find the ovules, we had to completely open the flower up, remove all the stamens, and find the stigma right in the middle. Because the ovules are inside the bottom of the stigma near the receptacle, we had to use a blade to make a slit in the stigma in order to see the ovules. It's very challenging because it's so small and you have to do this under the microscope. The three of us successfully found ovules in almost all of them! We noticed that the smaller the stigma, the tinier the ovules are, which makes sense, but it's so amazing how tiny they are. We also noticed the the more immature the flower, the more ovules were present. How fascinating!

Well this post successfully took me a full 2 1/2 hours to write... It would have taken me less than an hour, but while typing it, the women who clean my room every day came in and asked me to leave for a little bit so they could clean. I took my laptop with me so I could finish this and headed to the Zebu Club. I managed to type about my first paragraphs when a man sat down across from me at the table and started talking to me. He was extremely friendly, so I started talking to him too. After about 20 minutes, I realized he wasn't going to leave anytime soon, so I closed my laptop and gave him my full attention. He asked me if it was okay for him to buy me a macchiato. I said that would be great! (because that is my favorite type of coffee here so far. It's part coffee and part milk. It comes from the Italians.) We sat there drinking our macchiatos and chatting about pretty much everything under the sun-- from my interests to my college plans to what I like most about here to my personal life to his life to his interests to EVERYTHING!!! It was so great. He gave me his business card and said he would love to show Millie and me around Addis. (He hates the thought of us ever just hanging out in our rooms and not getting any new experiences.)  I need to ask Tigist for her opinion about this situation before I call the man back about anything. I know people are very friendly, but I know it's unsafe for Millie and I to go anywhere alone with a man we just recently met. He said that if Tigist would say it would be okay for us to do this, he would take us to a traditional Ethiopian night club! AWESOME!!! Millie and I can't wait! He said if we ever wanted to do anything, just give him a call and he would be more than willing! People here are so great, open to everyone, and so friendly. It is such a great, amazing experience to be here.

My macchiato!