Creation and Destruction

The life and death of a bean plant named Mendel.

❦ Part One - Life ❦

So, I'm a high school biology teacher.
This is a photo of me explaining pH to the kids.

I recently had the kids do a lab where they pretended to be birds and had to pick up "food" with different "beaks" to show how variation can lead to evolution. Anyway, the "food" was little white uncooked lima beans. After all 4 classes had done the lab, I was throwing them all out and my mentor-teacher was like "you should plant some!". I grabbed a few plastic cups and some wet paper towels and left the seeds to germinate.

During Spring Break, I had to take them home to babysit them until they sprouted and I could plant them.

I decided to document their growth for this task. Not too original, but it was lots of fun. I took a picture each day before going to school, so in the very early morning light. Below is the animated gif showing the plants' progress.



As you can see, the seeds in the cup on the right didn't grow nearly as quickly. In fact, it is still growing right now, but hasn't made it out of the orange cup yet.

Things were going well, the first plant, Mendel*, had about six nice sized leaves and the second plant was slowly making progress.

*The cup was labeled "Mendel" because we name our lab tables after famous scientists. A student from the table named after Gregor Mendel apparently labeled it to keep their cup separate. I noticed this later and found it funny as Mendel is famous for his experiments with pea plants.

☠ Part Two - Death ☠

Today I went to check on their paper towels (I never did get around to planting them) and I noticed a light coating of brown-greyish mold growing on the towels. I decided to change them, and cleared the kitchen table to do so. You don't want to see a picture of the mold, it was gross.

So, as I threw out the moldy towels, my cat took notice.
This is a picture of my cat. Her name is Penny and in this photo she looks particularly innocent. She loves laundry day.

She grabbed the first leaf before I could react. I shoed her off the table and squirted her with the water bottle. A few minutes later, she was up there again, so instead I grabbed my camera.



I figure, I can't really stop her from eating the plants. Might as well document it. And since they're beans, I figure not too much harm can come to her, they can't be poisonous.

So I put the plants back on the window sill with new paper towels and hoped she wouldn't notice. A few hours passed, but then....



So much for my bean plant.