Learning to see what is seen in nature

By CARL E. FEATHER - Staff Writer - cfeather@starbeacon.com
Star Beacon

May 04, 2009 11:29 pm

— Six male teenagers climbed out of the Grand River Academy van and huddled on the Western Reserve Greenway Trail to review their strategy for the two-hour contest of brains, observation and teamwork.
They were out to kick some serious botany butt.
“I love plants,” said Trey Jones, a Grand River Academy (GRA) senior, who assumed leadership of GRA’s five-member Ashtabula Botany Challenge team.
The team was one of nine participating in this year’s event, which pitted them against Jefferson, Geneva, Edgewood, Pymatuning Valley, Conneaut and SS. John & Paul high schools in a contest to identify 32 wildflowers along the Western Reserve Greenway Trail (WRGT). The event was held last week and marked the ninth year for competition.
Barrie Bottorf, Mary Howe, Bruce Loomis and several volunteers make the challenge possible. Bottorf, a retired school speech pathologist, says the event originally was started to raise awareness of flora in the Ashtabula River Gulf. A grant from the Jefferson Foundation helped get the project going, and that group has been a supporter of the work every since. This year, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History also co-sponsored the challenge.
The botany challenge is, to Bottorf’s best knowledge, the only one of its kind in the state, possibly the nation. It is designed to teach students about the diversity of local flora and how to use a wildflower key to identify flowering plants. Students have two hours in which to find 32 wildflowers and identify them with both common and scientific names. Bottorf says that, going into this year, they never have had a team turn in a perfect score sheet. Some have come very close, however.
The challenge is open to all county high school students; a teacher selects the team and an alternate. Under the instruction of Bottorf and Loomis, students use copies of Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide to learn how to key wildflower samples. Practice rounds are held the week prior to the challenge.
“We’ve been to the trail three times, looked at a slide show and learned how to use the book,” said Trey Jones, explaining how the GRA team prepared for the challenge.
GRA and Jefferson tied for first place last year. Bottorf says winning teams earn money for their school’s botany program to use for purchasing supplies, equipment and materials. Botany is usually taught as a part of an outdoors or biology course, so most students don’t get a great deal of hands-on work with the branch of science that deals with plant life.
“I discovered I like botany,” said Cassie McMinn, a senior on Jefferson’s team, when asked what she learned by being a team member.
“It was fun, and I’d like to learn a little more about it. It’s cool to know about it and how to use the book,” added Colleen Geraghty, also a Jefferson team member.
“Once they get out here, they get very competitive and have a lot of fun,” said Mary Howe.
Bottorf says one of the program’s goals is get teenagers to slow down and see the natural world. “Some of these kids have never really been outside like this,” Bottorf said. “It sounds crazy, but they haven’t looked at nature.
“Many people look at stuff, but they don’t really see it,” Bottorf added. “What we’re doing is teaching these kids to actually see what they are looking at.”
Some of that observation involves using a magnifying glass to sort out the species. For example, to distinguish violet species, students must look for hairs on the stem or in the bloom. One species is identified by a knob on the end of the fine hairs.
“You must have a glass to see them,” Bottorf said.
“They really get into it,” Howe said. “You can’t just look at a plant and say, ‘Yeah, that’s a rose.’”
Even the experts can be fooled. Bottorf said that during a practice session this year, a student picked up on a plant that the advisers had marked incorrectly.
Another challenge facing the organizers is dealing with nature’s timetable. This year’s challenge was planned for the Gulf. However, spring is taking its time arriving there, and because the book they use requires the plant be in blossom to key it, organizers had to find a location where plants were blooming. That meant moving farther south, although the warm spell played havoc with the wildflowers there, as well.
Once every team has taken the challenge, the sheets are scored and winners determined. They were announced at a picnic-type dinner for students, their parents, school administrators and challenge volunteers held at Jefferson United Methodist Church last night.
Every school receives $50 for participating; the schools of the top three teams get prize money, as well. All team members and volunteers receive a T-shirt.
Bottorf says it costs about $2,000 a year to do the challenge, and the organizers are very grateful to their volunteers and donors for their support in both money and expertise.
“We could not do this thing without the Cleveland Museum of Natural History,” said Bottorf. “Jim Bissell (curator of botany) is really terrific to us.”

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