Tuesday 10 September 2013

Dichotomous Keys

Classifying living things can be complicated.  A dichotomous key is a series of questions with two possible answers that will help you identify or name a living thing based on characteristics that you can see.  For each object, you complete the series of questions until it has been identified.

Try your luck at a classification interactive game at the link below:

Interactive Classification Game

Today, we will be making observations about 2 or 3 trees and using on online dichotomous key to try to identify the trees around the school.

You can take a SMALL sample of the leaves/needles (or a picture), as well as pictures of the leaf pattern, branches, tree bark and any other characteristic or measurement that you think may be important to identify your tree.  Once you have made your observations, the link to the dichotomous key is below:

Dichotomous Key

Please post at least 3 pictures, describe the defining characteristics and the identification of your tree to your blog.


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