Botany Quiz: Which of the following is an example of a monocot?

I am the 2nd one to do this...WOW don't know if i am right so i guess i will wait and see what everyone says.

Char

Char, you are correct.

I got it right, but I have to confess, I looked it up. And it wasn't easy to find the answer. But I don't feel like I cheated, I feel like I learned something today, and that is a big part of what I like about Dave's. I learn something about plants and gardening every day.

I knew for sure half of them were wrong, but choose the wrong one remaining.

Well, I don't know if I'm correct ~ but I don't know if you are either. lol

oops I suppose I have never grown a daylily seed before so i didn't know. You learn something new every day.
Martha

Darn it. Daylily was my first answer, but I changed my mind to gingko and voted that.

lol i still belive its the water lilly

HA! Pure guess and I got it right! I must have seen that info somewhere and filed it away in the shallow dark recesses of my brain.

I thought "monocot" was just an uncomfortable bed for one, as in "Grandpa and Grandma, we'll put you in the guest room, and Cousin Larry, you'll be sleeping on the monocot."

I learned this in college biology, and (somehow) I retained it for the 25 + years since. I don't exactly know what it means, biologically speaking, but I can tell a monocot from a dicot. Usually.

xxx,
Carrie

LOL, Bdale

I partially cheated, I googled the word and the first thing I read was that when a monocot seed sprouts, the first leaf up is a single stalk, like a blade of grass. So I stopped reading and went back and guessed. Just luck that I was right. LOL

32% so far got it right! We've got to brush up on our skill. lol. (I was wrong btw).

And I was SOOOOO wrong. Just goes to show you that I have a lot to learn!!

Since I'm a "see it in the nursery.....think it's pretty....deer won't eat it....buy it....plant it....wait and see" type person, I thought it meant "one seed" and chose the "dummy answer": apricot! :-)

darn, wrong again. i know that palms are monocots so i picked cycad, even though cycads aren't palms. foiled again.

I fell into that trap too. Ginkgo had me wondering as well.

these "traps" are feeling like quicksand lately. from my answers, you'd think i've never picked up a book in my life! LOL

LOL BDale60!

I cheated and looked it up first. I agree with Grampapa - it's not so bad if I got an education out of it. I had no clue otherwise!

Harper

I looked it up and was still corn-fused...the definition I read said it included lillies and some ferns, and I come back to our list, and there are daylillies, water lillies, and ferns....so I didn't vote. I just came here to see what the answer was. LOL

Good one, Terry!

I read the def. 4 times and I still don't have a clue.

yeah i completely have no idea... i almost picked apricot haha.

I will go out on a limb (every pun intended) and say that every plant with parallel veins running straight up and down the leaves are monocots, and those with spreading, "tree" shaped vein structures in the leaves or which have leaves made up of leaflets (like the arrangement on a cycad leaf) are dicots. I await the debate from the botanists and other experts to provide the exceptions to that rule so that we can all continue to learn.

Jeremy

Jeremy, that's what I took home from college 25 years ago. But then how do grasses fit in? They hadn't invented grass yet when I went to college.

xx, Carrie

Carrie, grasses do have parallel veins in each leaf blade. A full lawn is a few billion plantlets.

Zen koan:

"Take up a blade of grass and make it your sixteen foot golden Buddha."

Ponder upon that, Grasshopper, or chew on it, if you prefer. LOL

Jeremy

Yep, grasses are monocots.

Note that parallel veins doesn't necessarily prove a plant is a monocot, nor vice-versa – conifers have parallel veins but are not monocots, while arums have net veins, but are monocots.

Resin

Thanks, Resin. I knew there must be some exceptions to the "rule."

Jeremy

My eyes are crossed.

Osmosis Makshi. Maybe we can absorb it by osmosis.

or by charmin? did i say that?

LOL ~ guess you know I got this one wrong : /

I'm with makshi--still tryin' to uncross my eyes! And undot my t's...

Ah... I thought the lily might be right, but ultimately, I liked the word gingko, so I chose it. Oh well!

Those college ag classes pay off once again. ; - >

I, too, looked it up first, but hey, this a cheap way of getting some education.

I had to look it up, and even doing that I found one that was definately right and another that seams to be partially right. My brain hurts time for bed :)

So, what is the most recent categorisation for Ginkgo?
There are gymnosperms and angiosperms, is ginkgo a regular-sperm?
Protoconifer?
Plain ol' freak?

About all I know about Ginkgo biloba (http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/337/) is that it was around in the time of the dinosaurs and has not changed its structure since that time, that it is dioecious (has male and female plants), and that I greatly want a good sized seedling of G. biloba (hint! hint!) for my Jurassic Park Garden made up of plants like this that were food for the plant eating dinos.

Jeremy