I’m working on a botany report and need a sample draft to help me understand better.
You will be writing a research report on a subject of your choosing. You are to choose a single plant and report on a disease or ailment that the plant may be able to treat. You should choose one disease/ailment to focus on for your paper. ALL of the information in your paper should come from peer-reviewed primary literature (i.e. scientific journal articles). NO EXCEPTIONS. NO WEBSITES. NO BOOKS.In your paper you should include some basic information about the plant such as where it grows, basic botanical information, and even some cultural uses of the plant.
You can include other information. These are just suggestions. You should also include some basic information about the disease/ailment. What are the main symptoms? What causes it? What are some of the typical treatments?Then for the rest of your paper you should focus on the primary literature on the topic that you chose. Since this will be the bulk of your paper you will need to choose a topic that has been researched extensively. Be sure to check the scientific literature before choosing your topic to make sure that there is enough information for you to write a 3 page paper.
You can briefly discuss how the plant treats the disease/ailment, what it does in the body, mechanisms of action for the primary compound(s). Mostly want you to discuss experiments that have been done on the topic. You should discuss data (i.e. numbers!) from the literature. It is okay if some of the research is inconclusive or even if it says that the plant does not work. You are reporting on the literature on this topic so not all of it has to say that the plant works.
Report any of the studies that have been done whether the experiment was done in a petridish, on a mouse model, or on human subjects. All research is fair game. Be sure to organize your paper well. It should flow from one topic to the next with strong transitions. As far as the format goes it should have 1 inch margins, 1.5 spacing, and Times New Roman font or similar. You should include a title at the very top of the page and then start your paper just below the title. It should be 3 full pages not including literature cited. If your paper is too short, add data. If your paper is too long, edit it down.
Remember that all of your sources should be peer-reviewed primary scientific journal articles. No websites or books allowed. Since all of the information in your paper is coming from one source or another you should have citations after just about every sentence.
Typical formatting is as follows.The sentence should include in text citations with author(s) and year of publication as shown here (Stevenson et al. 2009).A typical format for journal article in your literature cited page should be something like this:Harris, J., K. Morris, and S. Levinson. 2019. Effects of Juniperus virginica on joint inflammation. Journal of Phytomedicine. 5:11. 202-205. The numbers at the end are the volume and issue number followed by the page numbers. Remember toalways italicize species names! The literature cited pages do not count towards the 3 pages that you need to write. Literature cited should always be in alphabetical order based on the primary author’s lastname.
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