Fascination of Plants Day 2015 in Russia – Success Story

Quick Facts Cities: 10 Events: 48 Attendees: more than 1500 people Institutions: 23 High Schools: 8

Map from FoPD Russia website showing geography of events

— A lecture for first graders could be much more fun than for university students!

prof. Alexander A. Soloviev, chair, department of Genetics, Russian State Agrarian Academy – Timiryazev Moscow Agricultural Academy

Fascination of Plants Day is a great international initiative which aims to attract people to plants and show everybody the importance of plants in our life and for the whole planet. Thanks to numerous enthusiasts, including Russian Society of Plant Physiologists, FoPD is coming to Russia second time and with greater number of events. Fascination of Plants Day was not widely celebrated in 2014 because it was coincident with FESPB and EPSO congress in Dublin, Ireland. It was a pleasure to see that in

report of Christine Metzlaf from EPSO on FoPD 2013 almost a half of photos were taken at events in Russia! One year later, in May 2015 our colleagues again went to parks and gardens, forests around, and invited school students to their labs. Events Overview Plants Day in Russia started even before the official date in city of Petrozavodsk, because events are organized when it’s appropriate for guests and hosts. Dr. Evgenia Markovskaia, head of Department of Botany and Plant Physology, and her colleagues were leading excursions and hands­on activities for school students in Petrozavadsk State University – more than 300 people from 15 schools in Karelia! Students met one of the most modern herbariums in Russia which was maintained since 18th century, received a new knowledge about medical herbs, carried out experiments with plants, and learned more on lichens that are so abundant in Karelia. St. Petersburg school students have picked up the baton the same day heading to Karelian forests to hike and examine water ecosystems. Kazan Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics and Timiryazev Moscow Agricultural Academy invited grads to lectures on agricultural plants and excursions to experimental plots in the centre of Russian capital. Everyone there had chance to taste bread, porridge or pancakes made of various kinds of wheat.

Fascination of Plants Day in Petrozavodsk State University. Photo by O. Kuslis / PetrSU press service.

Workshops “What do we know about wheat?” by Valentina S. Rubets, “Flax – a plant which gives us dress” by Alexandra V. Shitikova and Olga A. Schuklina; excursion “Agriculture and selection in the centre of Moscow” by Alexander A. Soloviev. Fascination of Plants Day in MSAA. Photogallery of department of Genetics..

St. Petersburg, Pskov, Perm, and Kemerovo hosted a number of events during the week of May 18th. There were a lot of excursions, photo and painting contests for school pupils, and, the most important, kids planted their own trees in their school backyard. Fascination of Plants Day coincides with spring in the most of Russia’s territory, and that gives a great benefit for teachers to demonstrate rapid nature development and successive flowering of numerous primrose plants. Students and school graduates learn that not only coltsfoot does flower in spring, but primroses, bluebell, pilewort, anemone, corydalis, lungwort, viola do flower as well, succeded by iris, buttercup, and common dandelion. Girls and boys also learned how harmful are dry weed fires for nature, and got familiar with biodiversity of plant neighbourhood even in the city.

Photos: V. Gromova, V. Kurinov, P. Sharikov, O. Chernova.

Thanks to remarkable enthusiasm and activity of Viktoria Gromova, lots of school teachers participated in Fascination of Plants Day in St. Petersburg. Together with pupils, they planted trees, explored local parks and distant bog and wetland complexes studying the basic principles of how plants live together and survive near a big city.

Photos: M. Karaborcheva, V. Shepeleva, B. Pokrovsky, N. Luchina. It’s hard to highlight every event of FoPD week. More importantly, all the colleagues enjoyed the Plants Day and organised a number of events with great enthusiasm to the joy of students and schoolkids! We appreciate the work of all event organisers and thank FoPD guests for their interest! It is a big pleasure to especially thank Viktoria V. Gromova from Primorsky DDT in St. Petersburg, Dr. Yulia A. Danilova from Baltic Fund for Nature for their honoured support and organisation of events, and Dr. Nelly R. Zaripova, scientific secretary of Russian Society of Plant Physiologists for her informational support and suggestions! Current news, mentions, reports are available at https://vk.com/plantday (in Russian). NC’s videomessage to teachers in St. Petersburg, 2015­05­29: https://youtu.be/WXR_tlFI3Es

As a national coordinator, it is a pleasure for me to invite everybody to an open discussion for FoPD future in Russia at the VIII Congress of Russian Society of Plant Physiologists this September in Petrozavodsk. We have number of ideas to present you, meet everybody in person and invent how to make Plants Day even more fun and interest to everybody in May of 2016! Gregory A. Pozhvanov PhD, assistant lecturer Department of Plant Physiology and Biochemistry Faculty of Biology St. Petersburg State University www.plantday.ru gregory@pozhvanov.com