What plants are easy to use for a science experiment?

I’m doing a science experiment where I need 4 identical plants to put in different climates to see which one would grow faster. I need to know what plant species is good for this. Any ideas?

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One Response to What plants are easy to use for a science experiment?

  1. gardengallivant says:

    Wisconsin Fast plants are bred for use in experiments. They are genetically similar to reduce variation is responses and they have a very short life cycle.
    http://www.fastplants.org/

    The other choice is to go to the nursery and ask for a plant they know to be propagated by tissue culture, so they are clones. A fair number of plants are grown this way so some should be available. Another choice is to use a named cultivar. Using clones or highly inbred named cultivars eliminates the plant’s genetic variations that could introduce another variable to the experiment if you used wild types or less thoroughbred strains.

    A named cultivar would have a tag like [Chrysanthemum 'Cinnamon Pueblo' ]
    http://www.greenhousegrower.com/article/16048/spring-trials-2010-chrysanthemum
    What specific plant you choose to study depends on what climactic conditions you can control and what you can reliably vary as the independent variable. Your choices must be based on solid observation or knowledge of the plant since some species have narrow tolerances while some have wide tolerances of environmental factors.

    The plant could be a cactus and you could grow them under variable watering conditions to look at soil moisture tolerance.

    Tropical plants do not tolerate abrupt temperature changes but some are more cold tolerant if the change is slow enough and limited in how far it goes. Test their response to chill stress.
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3129041/

    Use shade plants and vary insolation to determine light tolerance. Strong light can destroy chlorophyll in plants lacking protection.
    http://www.photobiology.info/Chalker-Scott.html

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