The Story of the Seed

A Matter of Selection  Since the start of the school year, my team and I have had the eye-opening opportunity to plant and observe our very own Brassica oleracea, or broccoli, plants in the garden. Throughout the experience with our own plant, we have also been able to witness many other types of Brassica oleracea grow and mature to develop different traits at every stage of their life cycles. Despite the fact that all 4 types of plants growing in the garden (broccoli, cabbage, kale and cauliflower) share 99% of the same DNA, upon close observation and data collection it is clear that, along with the obvious similarities, there are also notable differences and variation present among the organisms.  During our investigation, we discovered that the characteristic of the plants that exhibited the most variation (greatest number of different forms) was the leaf shape and size. Some of the plant leaves were round and floppy, while others were more ridged with a lot of in...

The four types of plants in the garden are cabbage, kale, cauliflower, and our broccoli. These plants shared some similarities since they are from the same common ancestor, but in my opinion, the part of the plant with the most variation is the shape of the leaves. Each type of plant had a different shape of leaf. The broccoli had dark, cool-green, boat-shaped leaves. The cauliflower had leaves with ruffle-like edges but was flatter than the broccoli and cabbage leaves. Those variations had leaves that caved towards the center vein. The kale leaves were even more abnormal looking and ruffed like the cauliflower but the sides were not straight. The edge of the leave curved in and out like a rounded spike. The cabbage leaves were the most simple but also probably the most different from the rest of the leaves. The cabbage leaves were sturdier and just round. The edges didn't really have any ruffles or purposeful indentation. The part of the plant that had the greatest range of varia...