The Australian tree is a nuisance in Florida especially in the everglades. The trees grow to immense forests and eliminate all of the vegetation that surrounds it. During a span of fifty years, melaleuca quinquenervia has taken hundreds of thousands of acres of the Everglades. It is threatening the very existence of the Everglades and its surrounding wetlands.The FIU Biscayne Bay Campus collaborated with the Everglades National Park along with the Upper Bound Math and Science (UBMS) high school program in order to further investigate and understand the nature and concerns of the extinction of the Everglades plant species.Laboratory techniques such as simple distillation, extraction, percent recovery, IR, GC, and refractive Index along with statistical software such as SPSS were used to analyze their results. The students developed awareness and understanding about our environment as well as become active member in the restoration of the Everglades.

Environmental invaders: Extraction and analysis of the essential oils from the Maleleuca Quinquenervia in the South Florida Everglades

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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