Monday, December 20, 2010

Fern Rap


Several of my fellow TAs in the Botany Department are teaching Introductory Biology this semester, a giant, 1,000-student mega-class. One of the professors offered the students the opportunity to write a song to get extra credit... and one of the results is an absolutely phenomenal effort by a group of these students. My fellow grads let me know about it, for soon-to-be-obvious reasons, and the professor gave me the audio file and permission to post it here. I hope you'll join me in appreciation of these students' efforts and their scientifically accurate (but for a tiny detail or two) composition putting the fern life cycle to song. I (well actually they) give you the Fern Rap.


For your reading/following-along pleasure, here arethe lyrics:


I’m a fern in the world, just trying to grow

Fertilization and cell division is all that I know

I just want to survive and spread my spores

And know I’m not a peach but my life is hard core


They say I’m a monilophyte but you can call me a fern

My life’s been a long one, with many twists and turns

Sometimes it’s hard to discern what stage I’m in

Let me welcome you to my world, let the story begin

I started out as a spore, on the bottom of a leaf

Grew up in a sporophyte, my release was a relief

I had many brothers and sisters, and some of them didn’t make it

But sometimes life is hard, and the goal is just to stay fit

I was a small little guy, all alone and homeless

But I soon started to grow I guess you could say mitosis

And pretty soon fertilization became my focus

But I knew finding a mate for me was pretty much hopeless


I’m a fern in the world, just trying to grow

Fertilization and cell division is all that I know

I just want to survive and spread my spores

And know I’m not a peach but my life is hard core


So I fertilized myself just not to remain childless

I really didn’t care that all my kids would be homozygous

It really wasn’t hard there was no pandemonium

I just put sperm from my antheridia into my archegonium

So now I was a zygote, yeah from 1N to two

The best years of my life, and upwards I grew

The increase in my size was all in my genetics

And it also didn’t hurt that I was photosynthetic

I grew and I grew and it seemed like overnight

I reached my final stage and became a sporophyte

So now I’m making sporangium all on my own

And just hoping my little spores, will all find a home

8 comments:

sarcozona said...

Fantastic!

Mary said...

So there's hope for this generation of undergraduates, after all. Wonderful.

Lisa at Greenbow said...

I hope this group got an A+. This is a hoot. A great teaching tool for the younger generation. I am glad you put the words on the post too so I could follow along. I am at that Ahem AGE that I can't seem to follow the lyrics on this quick speaking music.

Monika said...

Amazing song! :)

Elizabeth said...

LOVE this. My favorite rhyme:

So I fertilized myself just not to remain childless

I really didn’t care that all my kids would be homozygous

Bom said...

Following links can indeed be serendipitous. I think I came across your blog via this month's BGR. This post rocked! (or rapped which seems more apt) I hope you don't mind if I share this with my kids.

Louise Eliason said...

I love your rap song and creativity - it's so over-the-top! I can't wait to share it (and your credits and links) with our horticulturists and public garden members at Greater Philadelphia Gardens! Keep up the great work and blog.

Unknown said...

Love the rap! I plan to share it with my biology classes! Gets to main points that I have been trying to teach. Thanks tons!