The Affects of Competition for Resources and Sunlight Exposure on Plantago major (Common Plantain) Leaf Size At York University

The dataset was collected on two separate days, it was collected on Monday October 19th, 2015. and Monday October 26th, 2015. The sampling took place at Danby grassland at York University in Toronto, Ontario between 3:00- 5:00pm. The weather conditions of the location on both days was windy and sunny and the temperature ranged from 10-14 degrees celsius. The experiment was done in groups of 4 which included Aziza, Sahar, Paula and Shahana. The purpose of this experiment was to observe if competition and distribution of resources, among plants affects plant size by using different sampling techniques. This experiment consisted of recording average leaf size, crowding, number of Common Plantain plants, total number of leaves, number of leaves in sunlight and sunlight percentage. The plant was identified by its oval leaves and a quadrat was used to sample the distribution of Common Plantain plants. The quadrat was placed randomly on the grassland 70 times on the first day and another 70 times on the second day. A total of 140 replicates was collected on both days. For each plant, the size of the leaves was determined by measuring from where the stem attaches to the leaf of the plant to the tip of the leaf. This was measured in inches using a measuring tape and the leaf sizes were averaged for each plant being observed. Crowdedness of the plant was determined by observing the amount of other plant species surrounding the Common Plantain. A scale was used which was 0=no other plant species, 1=very little plant species, 2= quite a lot of other plant species and 3= lots of other plant species. Sunlight exposure which was a percentage was determined for each individual plant, by dividing the number of leaves exposed to sunlight by the total number of leaves. This was then multiplied by 100 to get a percentage. There was not a large abundance of Common Plantain plants at the location which is why for some of the replicates there was no data. Low temperatures could have played a role which limited the abundance of Common Plantain in the grassland.