Hmmm...didn't sound too challenging. She had been around herbs all her life and could tell you anything and everything you wanted to know about them. So identifying four of them didn't seem to hard. Taking out a fresh piece of parchment Nell drew the table that had been given to them.



Approaching the tables Nell's legs got tangled up in something that was on the floor. Pitching forward she ran into a guy in front of her though he saved her from falling completely. Blushing crimson she shot him an apologetic smile. "Sorry. Doesn't matter how old I get I'm still a clutz."

Her brown eyes scanned his face but couldn't recognize it. "I don't think I know you. I'm Nell." It wasn't a far stretch though to say that she didn't know him. Most of her friend seemed to be Hufflepuffs or Slytherins. Idly she wondered where Ed and Issac were.

Looking at the plants arrayed in front of her she picked one at random.

Glancing down at her chart, Cassia grinned seeing that only one field is left empty. She had taken quite long time looking around but she was able to define few herbs. Well, she was able to write about four one more shouldn't be a problem, right?

Though she had gotten really bored. Cassia started to look where she had already looked before ,in case she had missed a herb and because she was too lazy going to the other side of the greenhouse. And indeed she noticed a herb she hadn't paid attention to before. It was the one that her grandmother insisted to use on her when she was sun-burnt saying that herbs can do better than spells sometime.

Well, Cassia was glad she got sun-burnt because hadn't she suffered from the pain, she wouldn't have recognized this very herb which healed her.

So Cassia filled the last field and headed back to her seat triumphantly. She collapsed on the seat and tried to make the scents and smells she had been sniffling for the last twenty minutes go away.

...and so Sierra had reached the end.

Well, not the end, because she still had one more blank space on her chart, but at least she was able to start work on the very end of the assignment. She'd nearly reached the end of the greenhouse, too, which meant she'd run out of choices if she didn't find a fifth plant soon.

Hmm.... Something she knew...something she knew...

BINGO! Dittany! Score one more for the Potions Mistress' daughter! Thanks, Mom, for the knowledge about Potions ingredients.

Sierra stepped off to the side and began her note-taking about the dittany plant. Hmm...how should she describe it? It had green leaves...and then the leaves were sort of rounded. She wrote that down, not really sure what else to say. Then she wrote about how the entire herb could be used for potions, regrowing skin, and healing wounds.

...and DONE! Sierra peered down at her chart and reread it.

Awar stopped at Tingle Weed. She opened her book to find out an interesting fact. It screams?! She stared at it, wanting to spook it. She restrained herself.

Plant: Tingle Weed| Appearance: Long, green. Camouflages. It turns pink when disturbed by humans. It screams!!| Usable Parts: The whole plant seems to be usable.| Uses: Green dye, cure for aching gums, remedy for Luxemsprat, can be turned into twine or rope.

She eyed the plant. I want to poke it! She stared at it for awhile and then finally shook her head and moved on.

One more plant to go. Juliette cracked her fingers (her hand was starting to get a little tired from all the writing) and searched on. She came across simple cooking plants, like the ones she had put down before, but those didn't interest her, and so she passed them. She wanted to find something interesting for her last plant, and she was going to do so no matter what. She looked down at her textbook and saw a yellow weed photographed on the page. It was a dandelion.

Juliette thought it must have been some sort of mistake, since weeds (what dandelions where to her knowledge) where useless, and herbs had many uses. How could something be both useless and useful? That was like being both tall and short, things just didn't work that way. Neverless, she found one and found herself staring at the herb-weed thing.

This isn't a herb. Herbs can be used in cooking and cleaning, I never heard of anyone using a dandelion to clean their house. Her thoughts voiced in her brain. And nobody cooks with dandelions either. Do they? That'd make some weird stew. However, there it was in her textbook. She sighed and started to read the text that accompanied the picture. She frowned as she read, but the book was right, and so she just went along with it.

plant: dandelion
apperance: either yellow petals on a green stem, or white little seeds that look like budding petals (also on a green stem)
usable parts: every part of the dandelion is useful in some way
uses: cooking, for digestive and heart problems.

Juliette still didn't believe it, even as she was writing it down, but apparently the dandelion was useful to nature. Guess you learn something new every day, she thought.

Drawing her eyes away from the pretty flowers and things, Cora tried to find more helpful herbs. It was hard to leave the pretty, colorful ones behind for the green but more important ones. But she did. She already had two herbs, but she needed three more. Hmmmm. Cora could do this.

She thought about the other things her mother had in the garden, but could not think of anything else until she came across it. Dittany! Cora remembered this from the rather unfortunate accident. For a moment, Cora thought she wouldn't be able to use it. Her hands shook when she thought about the burns.

Taking a deep breath, she added one more to her list.

Herbs2.jpg

Perhaps she lingered a bit long over the peppermint, picking up some of the dropped leaves and slipping them into her pocket before she moved on to yet another plant. It was almost a shame there were so many options, because Vivi would have enjoyed spending more time figuring out creative uses for some of the more unusual plants tucked into corners here.

The nice thing about a greenhouse with herbs over fancypants plants was that these were really useful to someone who liked creating potions. Got that from her dad, she did. She sniffed a few blooming plants, sneezed again (thank YOU, Maximus James), and then spotted another one she recognized.

The plant was rather tall, with narrow off-set leaves, but Vivi wasn't sure she recognized it until she held a leaf up to the light. The transparent spots were a dead giveaway, and when a few leaves came loose in her hand, she put those in her pocket too. What could she do with some peppermint and St. John's Wort? Something to make you remember happy things, perhaps, or work through those that made you anxious.

Quote:

Plant: St. John's Wort
Appearance: Up to 1 m tall, narrow green-yellow leaves, transparent spots in leaves
Useable parts: leaves and flowers
Uses: Antidepressant and other medicinal uses, potions use

Moving on from the first herb, Emmanuelle quickly found another for her list. This one looked like lemongrass, and after getting a whif of it, it definitely smelled like it. Okay, so maybe this isn't going to be as hard as I thought. Taking note of it, Em hurried off to find a third one before time ran out.

Awar stopped at a seaweed looking plant. Looked like any other seaweed plant. She opened her book. OH, it bites. She stepped away from it.

Plant: Aqua Chomp| Appearance: looks like seaweed, except for small line of purple dots along edges which are teeth.| Usable Parts: Not much really.| Uses: Lures wizard/witches and bites them. Non-wizards use them like any other seaweed.

She mad-dogged it and walked away.

SPOILER!!: Tag's first set of notes

Plant 1: Jasmine
Appearance: Woody. About 15 meters in height, stems and leaves are green in color.
Useable parts: Flower and the oil
Uses: Used for infections with high fever also used for high case of depression and to help treat dry skin

After jotting down his first set of notes Tag rechecked his notes, stared at them for a bit and then nodded with his own satisfaction. This could pass as good notes, for the very beginning. He began to move around the greenhouse some more, checking out the herbs that were less occupied by crowding students and friends. Ahh, here was a new one. He stared at it for a bit, then looked at his textbook, stared at it some more and gave his best guess.

Plant 2: Sage
Appearance: Shrubby. The leaves are very pale, not much color on them.
Useable parts: Leaves and oil
Uses: It can help with people having spasms. Helps improve the liver and can heal wounds.

One down and 1,000 to go. Well not exactly, but it sure felt like it. Hannah moved around the greenhouse some more and was face to face with more and more herbs/plants that she knew nothing about. Sigh. She was ready for this assignment to be over. She was about to give up hope when she ran into another familiar herb. She wanted to fist pump from excitement. She didn't though...so not like Hannah. Focus Hannah! The herb that she was standing in front of was none other than Bay Laurel.

It was a large shrub with glossy leaves and pale green and yellow flowers. She knew that they used those for seafood dishes...GAG! Who wanted to eat food that smelled like fish? Not Hannah!

Nerida knew tons of herbs! She loved herbs. Though as she looked down at the chart, she didn't know some of the things that they needed to write down. Biting down on her lip she looked around the place. Clutching her parchment with the chart she had copied down, Nerida walked around the green house. She spoted a purple plant.

That was lavender right? Taking a closer look, she nodded to herself it was definitely Lavender. The Ravenclaw began to fill in the chart. After finishing the fourth year stood back up and began to look around for some more herbs to add to her chart.

She only needed to find three more herbs. Surely it wouldn't be that difficult of a task. She had to be able to identify three more herbs in this plant farm. Walking around aimlessly she walked smack dab into bulb-like plant and instantly knew what it was. Chives! There was definitely no mistaking them. Hannah enjoyed chives on her meals. Chives also helped repel insects and people used them in their gardens to help with the whole bug eating the plants thing. Yup, Hannah did know some stuff after all!

Dylan listened as Professor Bentley talked about their answers before deciding on the activity which was to go around looking for herbs? really? no looking at those plants with the teeth, or that really big one over that looked really awesome? She wanted them to go looking for herbs? those boring things that were used in potions and stuff. He wondered if the things he had about Herbology were true, cause he had heard some good and awesome stuff but the way this class was going all that seemed like a lie to him. But he hoped the other lessons would be better than this one so for now he was going to go look for those herb thingys.

He opened up his book and then he went off to look for some herbs, he caught the sight of a plant with yellow flowers on it that seemed to be about half his size if not then less than him, so about 2foot maybe? He decided that it looked like it was a Marigold plant, and he started filling out the table that he had. He filled out the name of the plant, he then filled out what it looked like which wasn't hard seeing as he could see that plant. He also filled out what parts of the plants are used before listing what their uses were. Since the spaces were small he could only put so much information on there

Gideon listened carefully as Professor Bentley commented on their answers and moved on to the first task at hand she wanted them to do. Construct a table of herbs...that sounded easy enough to do. Using the table that was up on the blackboard as a guide, he copied a similiar chart onto a clean sheet of parchement so he had something to work with.

As they were dismissed to do the activity, he briefly looked around debating in which direction to start his search. The prefect finally opting to head towards his left in a sort of circuit around the greenhouse. The first plant he identified as an herb was a hardy celery-like plant. Lovage...Gideon remembered its name as, the seventh year familiar to it through its use in potions. So he added it and the information he looked up on it to his chart before moving on.

SPOILER!!: chart

"Just two more to go,'' Jory thought as he paused a few seconds to watch the other students. Some of them were searching various plants while others who had located herbs were filling out their tables.

The Badger began once again to search. He tried to avoid plants students had already identified. "No use re-writing most of what was recorded already,'' he thought as he passed some of the students.

Just then, he came upon one that he suspected might be a herb so he checked the text for confirmation. Yes, this one could be classified as a herb.

One down, four more to go. She began to walk around until she walked into tons of leaves. After bending down at looking at them she realized what the plant was. Bay leaves, something she had saw her mother use bay leaves! There was definitely no mistaking them. Quickly Nerida took out her chart and began writing down what she knew about them, and had to go check her book about some of the uses. After finding the uses, Nerida quickly added them to her table. Finishing up her eyes glanced at the plants in front of her.

Frowning at the plants, and wondering what to do next, Ira saw a beautiful potted rose plant, with the flowers topping it off nicely. Wait! Weren't roses used in one of the potions? Hmm.. which one?? Ira began thinking about it.. ah! The love potion! Oh yes, rose thorns were used in making love potion. So that made rose a herb, didn't it? So ingredients used in potions were herbs.

Grinning, she wrote down the rose plant in her table:

Yes! Ira had found her third herb! Three out of five wasn't bad, yeah? Now just two more to go! Maybe she could just try and remember potion ingredients.. It would make this work a lot easier!

Jory now began his hunt for the fifth and final herb. He took longer this time to find one than the other four. Occasionally, he would stop to look at the herbs the other students had recorded.

After a while the Puff wandered over to a part of the Greenhouse where there were less students. Here, he began to examine the plants and did a lot of consultation with his text. He had checked out about three of the plants before he finally came across a herb.



"Done!'' Jory said to himself.

Nerida for the third time, began looking around for a herb. This time her eyes fell on a famillar plant that she had seen in her grandma's garden. What had she called it? It had those small flowers.. That was it! Lovage! Sitting down next to the plant. She observed and looked at it. Jotting down her observations as the time passed. Finishing up the third line of the table, before finishing Nerida began to look around for the herb she would use as her fourth herb. Her eyes caught Rosemary, basil and some other herbs. Looking back down at her table she finished up the usable parts section for Lovage.

Kurumi couldn't help but laugh. "Yeah....Jonathan never really fancied Herbology...I used to tutor him before..." But she didn't finish that thought. It sort of seemed as though her and Juliet had a mutual understanding of the situation. Really though, Jonathan could have been very good at the subject if he had applied himself and not fallen asleep during their study sessions. She did laugh again when Juliet said that she was no good at the subject either. "Seems to run in your family's blood."

While the Slyherin finished up her chart, Kurumi checked hers over and added her name, year, and house to the top. She was fairly sure that she had done it right - she knew the information on the parchment was correct anyway. Whether or not each was a proper herb was another story however. Then again, Kurumi's understanding of herbs was really limited to cooking and baking, so it wasn't a very scientific or Herbologic understanding.

"You're welcome and, really, it was no trouble." She didn't owe her anything. Wait...actually...maybe Juliet could help her...but she would have to ask later. Class was not the time to discuss such matters.

After adding some final touches to her third herb. Nerida looked around for another herb. This time a famillar herb, caught her attention. It was a gray-green leafed plant. Dittany. Something most of the students were probably familiar with. Was the whole plant of dittany used or was it just the leaves and flowers? She looked around the room trying to remember what her mother told her. After remembering she added it down to the table. She tapped her lip as she tried to remember what dittany was used for. Closing her eyes she remembered that dittany was used to heal scars.

Finally turning away from the tree she'd ran into, and therefore the mistletoe that had been there as well, Kendall reached a hand up to twitch the end of her braid over her shoulder. She'd gotten awfully surprised by the collision , so she just wanted to make sure that nothing had happened. Her hair, besides the pink, was still solidly auburn, though, so she abandoned her examination rather quickly to resume her herb search. That and she'd checked on Aspen and the other boy again, just out of curiosity. She didn't know why anyone would want to be a vampire anyway, and definitely didn't know why anyone would want to eat raw garlic. Unless they wanted people to stay far away. She'd stick with chocolate any day, and she started wondering if there was any chocolate mint in the greenhouse. Not to add to her list, just for her own curiosity. Plus, she just found the fact there was a plant that smelled like chocolate but wasn't chocolate kinda awesome.

However, in that search, she'd turned a corner only to find herself confronted by a tropical plant. A tropical plant in the middle of all these normal ones, and she sat down on the ground to use her fingers to dig underneath it for a moment. Not to dig it up, but just to reveal a bit of the roots before burying them again. So that's what it looks like. Weird, she thought, pulling her parchment out of her pocket again to add a notation about ginger to her slowly growing list of descriptions. Hopefully it wouldn't take long to look up the uses once she returned to her bag. Two more herbs to go, and maybe still looking for that chocolate mint. Or maybe she'd just ask Professor Bentley if she had any after the lesson. That might be a better idea, un less she wanted to spend time just randomly sniffing the leaves of anything that looked like mint during classtime.

SPOILER!!: Plant 1

Plant 1: Jasmine
Appearance: Woody. About 15 meters in height, stems and leaves are green in color.
Useable parts: Flower and the oil
Uses: Used for infections with high fever also used for high case of depression and to help treat dry skin

SPOILER!!: Plant 2

Plant 2: Sage
Appearance: Shrubby. The leaves are very pale, not much color on them.
Useable parts: Leaves and oil
Uses: It can help with people having spasms. Helps improve the liver and can heal wounds.

Two guessed herbs down three more to go. Tag checked his notes again and went to another station and examined the herb that was position in front of him. Here was another one. It looked like a simple leaf. One that you might find in the amazon-right? Big and wet and dark green.

Plant 3: Ivy
Appearance: Yellow to green flowers.
Useable parts: Leaves and stems are used.
Uses: Used for a terrible cough and bronchitis.

There. Tag was almost done. Thank god. His feet were beginning to ache from standing up so long. How come they couldn't sit down in Herbology? Maybe they should have benches to check out the plants and such things in the future and just slide across the bench when the person finishes anaylzig a plant. Yeah!

Seren watched with anticipation as the students scattered, going off to explore the herbs within the greenhouse. Everything seemed to be going quite well, which was expected, seeing as the task was rather straight forward.

Except...



Why was Oakey TAKING herbs to one of the work stations?.... 0____o

"Oakey... we're not moving the plants around. Now please put them back where you got them from and perhaps pay closer attention to instructions.... minus five points."
Sure the boy hadn't killed anything, but had he not noticed that the other students weren't MOVING things around?

"Good work everyone, start finishing up... you've got five more minutes before we move on."


OOC: You still have 24 hours to complete the activity before we move on!