Pondweed – Cabomba caroliniana

As those of you who run the Bubbling Pondweed practical will already know, our recommended plant, Cabomba caroliniana, has been banned under The EU Invasive Alien Species Regulation. This means that you can no longer sell, buy or keep Cabomba caroliniana. 

Unfortunately, the tests in our search for an alternative have produced varied results but varieties that have worked for us include Egeria najas, Egeria densa, Elodea species and other Cabomba species such as Cabomba furcata (red cabomba) or Cabomba aquatica (yellow cabomba). Hornwort (Ceratophyllum demersum) can also be used in summer months but in winter the stems tend to be too woody. Please do let us know how you get on and if you have any recommendations.

If you still have any Cabomba caroliniana lurking in your classroom or prep room, Be Plant Wise has advice on how to dispose of non-native species. It is recommended to use green waste to dispose of pondweeds but if your school does not have green waste, household waste is appropriate.

Algal Growth Medium – for algal balls photosynthesis practical

Sciento, our recommended stockist, no longer provides ready-made algal growth medium for growing the Scenedesmus algae. Fortunately, they have sent us a recipe for making up your own which you can find on the SAPS website.

Please get in touch with any feedback on this procedure and the chemicals it requires.

News story – Botanic Gardens should work together to save endangered species

With the SAPS office being based in the Cambridge University Botanic Garden, we were interested to read that botanic gardens across the globe contain 30% of all plant diversity and over 41% of known threatened species. However, the report found that although botanic gardens are an effective way of conserving species, more work needs to be done to ensure that species from a range of climates are preserved as there is currently a bias towards temperate species.

The original journal article can be found here.

Cambridge University Botanic Garden

ASE Annual Conference – January 2018

We’ll be at the ASE Annual Conference in January this year as usual. As well as our stand we’ll be running practical drop-in sessions from 4^th – 6^th January which will give you a chance to try out some of our practicals and pick the team’s brains. You can find the timings of our sessions here.

This year’s conference is at the University of Liverpool and early bird tickets are on sale here until Friday 27^th October.

SAPS Team Members

The Science and Plants for Schools team has some new faces! As part of the Gatsby Plant Science Education Programme (headed by Dan Jenkins), SAPS is now led by Alex Jenkin, ably assisted by Project Coordinator Katrina Thompson.