Year 2
Year 2 have been investigating. What is the purpose of a bulb?
A question that we asked the Year 2 girls today, but as an adult I don’t think I’ve ever given it much thought.
To begin with we had to find some seeds and bulbs. We decided to become investigators and to delve into the mystery of what lies beneath an everyday, ordinary fruit and vegetable skin.
Well a lot we discovered. We focused in and realised strawberries have seeds on the outside and bananas actually have them inside. Discussion led to the fact that peppers and tomatoes are actually fruits because they contain tiny seeds in the middle and grow from the flower of the pepper and tomato plant.
A strawberry is actually a multiple fruit which consists of many tiny individual fruits embedded in a fleshy receptacle. The bits on the outside, that we thought were seeds, are the true fruits, called achenes, and each of them surrounds a tiny seed.
You really do learn something new every day – even as a teacher!
To develop our investigation further, some of the girls wanted to prove that we could grow onions from the onion bulb. Never ones to step in the way of scientific research, we grabbed a pot and some compost and with some sunshine, water and a bit of luck, who knows we may be sharing pictures of us making onion soup before you know it!
By the way, just in case you are not a thriving botanist and were slightly perplexed as how to answer our initial question: a bulb is the name given to the underground bud or stem of a seed plant at resting stage. Bulbs normally have a sort of stem with fleshy leaves that act as a form of food storage, allowing the bulb to stay alive and be dormant if there’s a lack of water.
