Missing Flora

Did you know plants can go extinct, just like the dinosaurs? Thousands of plants have already gone extinct, so they can no longer be found in the wild. You can help by caring for the plants we still have and learning all about them! Here is a great how-to video by a kid gardener named Samiah Rose.

What is DNA?

DNA is a little string of messages inside a cell that tell a cell what to build. DNA inside a plant might tell cells to build purple flowers on the plant or leaves shaped like ovals. DNA inside a human might tell cells to build brown hair on that human or blue eyes. A strand of DNA is so tiny that you can’t see it, BUT you can see lots of DNA strands grouped together. When thousands of DNA strands are extracted, or pulled out, of cells they look like a clear, slimy blob. Here is a video experiment where DNA is extracted from strawberries.

Smelling an Extinct Flower

A team of scientists and artists extracted DNA from extinct plants and used the DNA messages to rebuild the scent the plants used to have. Then, visitors came to a museum in France to smell the extinct plants. This was very special for visitors, because the plants in the museum no longer grow on Earth, so they could not be smelled by anyone except the visitors at the museum. Find out more about this experiment by following the link below.

Resurrecting the Sublime - Haeckels