Greenhouses

I've spent the last two days here, in the uni's new rooftop greenhouses, helping a student with an experiment.

There are six greenhouses total, all sitting on the roof of the main biology building. The view is pretty amazing.

I took these two photos one right after the other, first facing one direction, then turning to face the other direction.





After a few minutes, the storm clouds came and sat on the greenhouse. It got a little scary when the thunder and lightning started, but after a few minutes it moved on.

Sadly, I neglected to take a photo of the plants that we were working on (a kind of wild radish with a wicked pollen load), but I did get a picture of these amazing things:



Those are a kind of cottonwood tree that has been bred for paper production. Their claim to fame is that they keep their stomata open all the time, which is very unusual for a plant to do because they can lose a lot of water this way. Fully grown cottonwood trees can supposedly lose 100 gallons of water per hour in hot weather. The woman who helps to care for these cottonwoods told me you can't water them enough, and in fact, one of the experiments being conducted involves an attempt to grow them hydroponically.