Discovering your Garden

Ever wondered what kind of plants your garden contains? Or how about wondering why some plants just grow and sprout out of nowhere? Well, as part of our adventure to discover the world's biodiversity, our 4th Quarter CEO goes from the animals... to the living things that help sustain life- the plants.

Hey guys! we're back, and we are here to talk about the 4 simplest plants here on Earth! Introducing the divisions, Marchantiophyta, Anthocerophyta, Bryophyta and Lycopodiophyta! Now let's start the adventure!

Hello again fellow adventurers ! The Mild here, and I'm back to talk more about our adventures and experiences in our Science class.

See Source

For this particular topic, I was assigned to explain a division of plants known as the Division Bryophyta. Not familiar with it? Well, read on to learn a brief explanation about it!

Division Bryophyta (coming from the Greek words bryos meaning moss and phyta meaning plant) used to be composed of the mosses (true mosses, peat mosses and granite mosses), the liverworts and hornworts. But then due to their differences in characteristics, the liverworts and hornworts now have their own divisions- Marchantiophyta and Anthocerophyta. 

Mosses (true,peat and granite mosses) are primitive and non-vascular. They are considered to be the "amphibians" of plants because even though they live on land, they still need a lot of moisture in order to grow. Mosses also lack true roots, but instead, they have rhizoids. In order to reproduce, mosses also undergo the alternation of generations, meaning they have the gametophyte stage and the sporophyte stage, the sporophyte stage being the most dominant.

Mosses are essential to life because they are soil builders, they make the soil formation better, and they prevent soil erosion.

See source

Since I already experienced making a presentation in the past quarter, I thought that it would be a lot easier for me to do this report, especially since my division is one of the simplest. But then I was wrong. It was a lot harder for me. There were a lot of scientific terms, the information gathered was not enough and different sources do not contain the same information. I felt like my mind was going to burst out of "stress". I was even close to regretting the fact that i picked to work alone. But why did I pick to be alone? Why didn't I just work in a group? Well, this is because of one simple reason; I didn't want to blame or be blamed if things go wrong. Sure there are a lot of things to do if you work alone and working in a group would surely be a lot easier, but then it is really hard to rely on someone for a job to be done. Sometimes, I would rather just take all the weight in my back than to blame someone for not doing their job. And if anything goes wrong, if you are in a group, most probably everyone will start to argue. But if you are working alone, you have no one else to blame but yourself.                                                              

See Source

(But this does not necessarily mean that working in the group is not good, it actually is very helpful,especially when you know that you can trust your groupmates) 

Anyway, going back to the topic (my mind bursting out of "stress"), the first thing I did to resolve the problem was I researched some more and I prayed to God that He will clear the path for me.  I tried everything I can do to find some answers. Luckily, after how many searches, I found what I was looking for. 

On the day of the presentation, I was able to successfully report my topic and I felt relieved once again. I thanked God immediately for the guidance and the strength that He gave me, and I ended up leaving the room with a smile on my face.

I learned a lot of things during this experience, but the most important lesson I learned is that I should never give up. No matter how hard it is, I should just do my best and ask God for  the strength to enable me to finish the task. 

It's the Wild here! Let me tell you something, The Earth is like one big, gigantic garden ( imagine being able to put lions in there)!  And that garden holds hundreds of thousands species of plants!And, one of them is the Lycopodiophyta.

Lycopodiophyta or the Lycopods, are the oldest extant (existing) vascular plant, from around 430 million years ago. They are commonly called as club- mosses ar quillworts. I found this Lycopod in a tropical forest in Asia.  ( I mean-- the garden. get it? Cause the Earth is a garden? And it holds forests and stuff, from different countries?-- nevermind.)

It was much easier working on this CEO because this was easier to find! ( I wasn't able to find the etymology. But still.)

But working in a group has an advantage because you are assigned to research on particular data. As for me, I worked alone. It's not only tiring, but you get to say all the exciting infomation. Not only that, but you get the computer to yourself; No one's bothering you, you get to do your own thing, and your group mates don't have to keep changing the ideas. ( Not that I'm saying every group does.) 

But working alone is stressful. I had to keep going on and off the computer. I , amazingly, did not drink water for about 3 hours, because i had a hard time working out the powerpoint and handout. 

And, i finally found out the etymology of LYCOPODS.

Lyco meaning wolf

      +

Phyta meaning plant

             =

 PLANTS  VS. DOGGIES!

       ( coming soon)

 And now, the most important lesson i've learned from this is to learn how to protect the Garden, by being more eco-friendly. Learn how to prioritize and put more effort into my work, no matter what.

I'm back fellow readers, It's Wasabi! From all those exciting and witty introductions from The Mild, and the Wild, there's not much to say, so I'll be moving on to what is asked from you.

My fourth quarter CEO was done individually. It is about Division Anthocerophyta, a division which should have been under Bryophyta (Which is the Mild’s CEO). These assortments of plants were placed in a separate division because of their difference to both Bryophyta and Liverworts (Which is the Child’s responsibility) by a strand of DNA. It was only done recently so it must be hard to get information about it, but there are dozens of pictures showing their life cycle and horn like structure earning them the name Hornworts (Sounds like Hogwarts, no?).

Ha, what a question, I guess this already spread through out the 6^th grade batch. I was the girl without a power point! And to make it even worse, since this classification was only done recently, there was little information about it and its species. So it was entirely my fault, I procrastinated and waited until the day before the reporting, and I sent the wrong document type to our Urban Guru, but I figured that it wasn’t all that bad… I guess…

 Well, I’m not one to depend on somebody else entirely, and I don’t really know if I’m a so called ‘leech’ or something, but one thing sure is clear. Working alone gives the responsibility no other place to go but yourself, and that way you sure can’t procrastinate, especially if the topic you are trying to research isn’t on most reference places.

As I said, my references were limited to Wikipedia and other sites. Resulting to only a small bit of information, and I kind of sent the power point the day before and wasn’t able to read about the corruption of said power point, so I ended up lecturing on the board. But it was fine if you add a little bit of back bone into it.

 I really shouldn’t procrastinate. The Mild kept telling me how the report should have been equivalent to possibly a sixty-three. I also learned that you shouldn’t be dependent on the visual aid, because it always can’t help you. I was lucky to memorize at least three-fourth of the hard terms in my hand out and in my lecture.


Hello there everyone! It's me, the Child! Wow! I guess I'm last!
But anyway, for this CEO, I was tasked to report on the simplest division of plants on earth- Division Marchantiophyta. So what about it?
Division Marchantiophyta(from the words Marchantia, meaning a genus of liverwort and phyta) is a division of non-vascular plants called liverworts. They are recognized by their liver-shaped structure. Liverworts are usually small, being only 2.20 cm  wide, and less than 10 centimeters long. The liverworts also posses rhizoids, but unlike true mosses, its rhizoids are unicellular.


Because of its name, during the Ancient times, it was believed that liverworts cured diseases of the liver. Aside from this,  the liverworts are a great help in the erosion along stream banks (although not directly). They are also soil builders and they improve the soil formation, just like the mosses.  
In the ecology, liverworts serve as shelter for some epiphytes.

See Source

Preparing this CEO was a lot easier for me compared to the previous one. This is because this division is simpler and easier to study. Also because there are less facts I had to research on. 
There are some advantages and disadvantages on working alone. 

One advantage is that you don't have to go to other people's houses to do the project. Another is that you would always know what your report is about and you know that you are not missing out on anything.

On the other hand, however, working alone is slightly harder.  You can't get the help you can receive from a group if you are working individually. For example,  if you do not understand a certain portion of your research, you don't have any person beside you to explain it to you. Also, working alone means doing all the work, and this part was quite difficult for me. When I had a hard time getting the information I needed, I had no group mates to help me solve the problem. Good thing I had a mom who was caring enough to lend a hand and help me in my research.

The most important lesson I learned, well, were the facts that I discovered concerning liverworts. The knowledge I gained is a great part of my adventure in the biodiversity of the earth. 
Although you might be wondering why there are no "personal" lessons that I learned, well this is because I learned these from the 3rd Quarter CEO and I am gradually applying these lessons to my daily life. I am trying to gain from my mistakes from the past and hopefully, I improved.

So there you go! All our CEO's on plants! We hope you've learned that a plant is not only a plant, IT'S ONE OF THE 5 BIGGEST LIVING THINGS. SAVE THE EARTH, SAVE OUR AWESOME GREEN -- leafy trees that can be small or big.

And no matter what, they'll be around you.

Thanks guys! Till' next time!