This week for lab we went on a field trip to Mount Tamalpais. We drove there around 1 pm and got back at 5:00 pm. Once we got there we met Alec, Professor Paul’s graduate student and he led us through a trail to a creek. Over there he and Professor Paul taught us about Mimulus gutatus, the plant that they are studying. This plant shows great variability in morphology and where they can survive so they are a great model system to study. They also have a broad distribution, reach maturity quickly and are one of the first plants that had its whole genome sequenced, which makes it a lot easier to study.
When we got to the creek, each of us sampled a part of the plant and put it in a vial containing silica. Silica dries out the plant so that ‘better’ and more clear DNA can be extracted from it. Alec and Professor Paul taught us how to identify the plant as well- it can sometimes form a mat like structure on the floor and it has leaves that grow opposite to each other.
We labeled the vials with the date, location and our initials.
After the creek we walked over to a dry patch of land to see a variant of the Mimulus gutatus plant. We saw that unlike the green, lively variant we saw around the creek, the ones in the dry land were tannish brown and obviously very dried out. The seed pods could be broken open and a lot of tiny brown seeds would come out very easily.
Next, we walked over to look at Serpentine rock. Serpentine rock is very harsh for plants and includes heavy metals. There is not a lot of plants that can survive on this rock because of the dryness, heavy metals and the lack of soil around it. It has a greenish color with a copper tint and does not look like it would cultivate any plants that tried to survive there.
We looked at the Serpentine rocks at two different spots (across the street from each other).
Lastly, we walked a trail on the side of the mountain to look at another variant of the Mimulus gutatus plant. This one was interesting because even though the trail was all tan and looked dry, once we found a little part of the trail that has moisture, we found the plant they were studying. This one also flowered and had a yellow “monkey face” flower. We could tell that it was probably bee pollinated (pollination syndrome!) because of the color and the morphology- bees cannot see red and do preferentially pollinate yellow plants usually and the morphology included a landing pad- type petal that would be well suited for a bee to land on and gather/ deposit pollen.
