Phaseolus Vulgaris Lab Report

The plant used in this lab was Phaseolus vulgaris, or the common bean. This plant does C3 photosynthesis. First, my partner and I got two pots with a bean plant in each. In order to get the most accurate and relevant results when compared to one another, the bean plants were relatively the same size. The plants beforehand each had two larger leaves, three smaller leaves, and three leaves in bud form. The veins were lighter green while the leaves were darker green, and the leaves were smooth and tear-dropped shaped. One plant was speckled white while the others were green. For each plant we cut a square of parafilm; we stretched it out gently over the top of the pot, leaving just a little hole for the stem to come through, and stretched it to

We started the treatments at 1:45 and ended at 2:45, giving the plants an hour to fully respond to their environments. After the hour ended we retrieved our plants and weighed them using the same scale, ensuring accurate measurements. We subtracted the final weights from the initial weights, getting the change of weight in milliliters (or the milliliters of water transpired). Next, to find out the total leaf surface area for each plant, we cut off the leaves of our bean plants and then traced them onto a piece of paper. We weighed the pile of paper leaves and multiplied it by the average weight of four/five sheets of 10 by 10 centimeters squared paper, which is .8192 grams. By doing this, we were able to get the total leaf area in centimeters squared. Our final step was to find the transpiration rate; this was done by multiplying the milliliters of water transpired in each treatment by 1000 to change the unit from milliliters to microliters, dividing this by the total leaf area in centimeters squared, and then dividing that by the minutes (which was 60 in our