You and your neighbor each have a holly bush in your yards. You carefully water and care for your bush, but it fails to produce berries. Your neighbor, on the other hand, neglects his holly, yet it produces gorgeous red berries each year. Finally, in frustration, you replace your holly with a rose bush. The next year, your neighbor’s holly bush has no berries at all. What happened?

Question

A.  Roses compete for the same insect pollinators as holly bushes.
B.  Holly plants are dioecious. Yours was a male that was needed to pollinate the neighbor’s female.
C.  Roses secrete a chemical that inhibits the reproduction of neighboring plants.
D.  The neighbor’s bush became infected with the same disease that yours had.

Clarify Question
What is the key concept addressed by the question?
What type of thinking is required?

Gather Content
What do you already know about dioecious plants? What other information is related to the question?

Choose Answer
 Given what you now know, what information is most likely to produce the correct answer?

Reflect on Process
Did your problem-solving process lead you to the correct answer? If not, where did the process break down or lead you astray? How can you revise your approach to produce a more desirable result?

Answer 1

B.  Holly plants are dioecious. Yours was a male that was needed to pollinate the neighbor’s female.

Clarify Question
What is the key concept addressed by the question?
        · This question is asking you to identify why a holly bush is no longer producing fruit.
What type of thinking is required?
        · Analyze level:
        o This is an analyze question because you have to break the removal of a holly bush and the following lack of fruit production in a neighboring plant into their component pieces to understand how they function.

Gather Content
What do you already know about dioecious plants? What other information is related to the question?
        · Dioecious means male and females are found as separate individuals.
        · Seeds are produced when male and female gametes are present.
        · If a plant species has separate male and female individuals, fruit is only produced by female plants.
        · Fruit is produced to encase seeds and to encourage their dispersal.

Choose Answer
 Given what you now know, what information is most likely to produce the correct answer?
        · Roses do not compete with holly bushes for pollinators.
        · Roses do not produce inhibitors.
        · The neighboring holly plant must be female, as it was able to produce fruit. The holly plant that was removed must have been male, as it never produced fruit. Additionally, when the male plant was removed, the female plant stopped producing fruit.

Reflect on Process
Did your problem-solving process lead you to the correct answer? If not, where did the process break down or lead you astray? How can you revise your approach to produce a more desirable result?
        · Analyze level:
            o Answering this question correctly depended not only on distinguishing between monoecious and dioecious plants, but on your ability to analyze what is necessary for fruit production. If you got an incorrect answer, did you remember that components of dioecious plants include separate male and female individuals, or that if one gender is absent, fruit is not produced by dioecious plants? Did you have trouble breaking down dioecious plants and fruit production to determine the correct answer?