Category Archives: Environmental Trail

Scented Flower Bed

Creating a scented flower garden When planning a garden, whether it’s formal, a patio container garden, or a functional back yard, the main considerations are generally shape, texture, color, and blooming times for flowers. Scent often is more of a secondary thought, especially when considering mixing fragrances of different types of plants, flowers, shrubs, vines, and trees. The RHS Companion to Scented Plants, a new book by Stephen Lacey, is already educating me on the complexities of defining living scents and how they could be combined…

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Trees – Habitat for Biodiversity

There is no precise definition of a tree but it is commonly regarded as a plant having an elongated trunk with many supporting branches and leaves. Trees are not a taxonomic group but consist of different species of plant that have evolved independently to grow taller in order to compete for sunlight. Trees are usually long-lived some may even live for several thousand years, a few of them are even among the oldest living organisms alive. Trees and Forests Trees play a crucial role in…

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Jambolan Plum Garden

Syzygium cumini, commonly known as Jambolan Plum or Black Plum, is one of the best-known species in the angiosperm family Myrtaceae. It is a large evergreen tropical tree that usually grows 10-15m tall but can reach a height of up to 30m and live more than 100 years. Under its dense foliage, it has a thick greyish-brown bark with exfoliating woody scales which becomes lighter grey higher up. The oblong-ovate leaves are leathery and turpentine-scented. Its fragrant flowers are greenish-white in colour and arranged in…

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Evolution of Ferns

Leaves are lateral determinate structures formed in a predictable sequence (phyllotaxy) on the flanks of an indeterminate shoot apical meristem. The origin and evolution of leaves in vascular plants has been widely debated. Being the main conspicuous organ of nearly all vascular plants and often easy to recognize as such, it seems surprising that leaves have had multiple origins. For decades, morphologists, anatomists, paleobotanists, and systematists have contributed data to this debate. More recently, molecular genetic studies have provided insight into leaf evolution and development…

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Ferns Belt

Fern, any of several nonflowering vascular plants that possess true roots, stems, and complex leaves and that reproduce by spores. The number of known extant fern species is about 10,500, but estimates have ranged as high as 15,000, the number varying because certain groups are as yet poorly studied and because new species are still being found in unexplored tropical areas. The ferns constitute an ancient division of vascular plants, some of them as old as the Carboniferous Period (beginning about 358.9 million years ago) and perhaps older. Their type of life cycle, dependent upon spores for dispersal, long…

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Traditional Chinese Medicine

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been used for thousands of years to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease. Traditional Chinese medicine aims to restore the body’s balance and harmony between the natural opposing forces of yin and yang, which can block qi and cause disease. Chinese herbal products have been studied for many medical problems, including stroke, heart disease, mental disorders, and respiratory diseases (such as bronchitis and the common cold). To know more about the Traditional Chinese Medicine, please watch the following videos. 1. YouTube…

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Precious Medicinal Plant Garden

The Precious Medicinal Plant Garden has been established in our school since 2012 which dedicated to the collection and cultivation of a range of medicinal plants for the purposes of scientific research, conservation, display and education. All the plants collected in this garden are all documented in the Cloud KB learning platform. Students are allowed to explore about the medicinal plants via mobile learning. An area in the garden is specially reserved for the cultivation of the space-exposed seeds which is part of the Space-exposed…

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Science Behind Space Seed

Space-exposed seeds are the seedlings that brought to high-altitude balloons, satellites or spacecraft and are exposed to the radiation of cosmic rays, vacuum and microgravity to trigger or speed up mutation rate. The exposed seeds would be sent to the laboratory for screening, or hybridizing with some crops with desired growing factors, in order to cultivate new crop varieties and biological products. Unlike the genetically modified food, no foreign genes are introduced. The earth’s surface atmosphere has always blocked all kinds of radiation from the…

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Space Seed Nursery Ground

On the basis of one-year experience on space-seed nursery, Beijing Dong Cheng District Municipal Education Commission collaborates with the Hong Kong Institute of Education for Sustainable Development to launch “Education for Sustainable Development and Biodiversity: Space-Exposed Seed Nursery Programme”. The space-seeds have been delivered to three institutions in places with contrasting climates, namely Beijing, Hong Kong and Yunnan, for investigating how climatic factors affect the growth of the seedlings. As The Chinese Foundation Secondary School (CFSS) is renowned as the Exemplary School for UNESCO Project…

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