Growing new plants without seeds
In this activity, students learn how to grow plants from spores, bulbils, rhizomes, stolons, tubers or cuttings.
By the end of this activity, students should be able to:
discuss one way of growing a new plant without using seeds
experience one of the following: how to locate spores on a fern frond; how to locate and plant a plantlet growing as a bulbil, from a rhizome or from a stolon; how to divide a tuber or how to make a cutting.
Download the Word file (see link below) for:
introduction/background notes
what to do
discussion questions.
Grafting and budding
Grafting and budding are standard techniques used for propagating new apple cultivars. These techniques allow breeders to grow multiple plants of exactly the same genetic material (clones). Here, Richard Volz of Plant & Food Research (PFR) explains how these techniques are carried out at the PFR Hawke’s Bay orchard.
Related content
Learn more about some of the the big science ideas behind this activity in the articles Plant reproduction and Plant reproduction without seeds.
