Things on the BioBus were simply floral during a NYBG street fair on Saturday, August 13, 2011. The fair was held to celebrate Farmers’ Market Week, and it is safe to say that there was a large variety of produce offered by both NYBG stands and the actual farmers’ market. There, the BioBus’ staff (comprised of Dr. Ben, Nikki, Juliana, & Jordan) bought some beautiful bouquets hosting a variety of flowers…most of which were immediately brutalized by one Juliana (an intern at the BioBus) via scalpel. These lovely dissected samples were not wasted though! No, every and each sliver was carefully placed under the BioBus’s stereo microscopes under high magnification. Many children learned about the reproductive aspects of those flowers: where the specific organs are located and how a flower is pollinated. Some even got a short description of a plant’s vascular tissue, by yours truly. All the while, each person was given a sheet of paper containing visual aids with labeled arrows to aid them in their search for the plant reproductive organs.
“He’s so amazed; he’s trying to look at every part of the flower,” exclaimed an enthused mother, whose son was preoccupied with a bright red specimen.
These sheets even had spaces laid out for everyone, mainly the children, to draw what he had seen! Everything that was viewed, from the original flowers to their magnified samples were messily recorded and pasted onto the bus itself, and there they stayed until the event’s end.
The festival was a great success; as a man on a loud speaker announced, people were caught groaning that they had to leave. That made me snort. It was a long couple of hours that were extremely enjoyable.
—Jordan Sutphen