Relating Helicopter (Maple) Seed Production to Biology Concepts

My front yard maple tree is making helicopter seeds, tons of them.  However, not all helicopter seeds are turning out as one might expect.  I gave pairs of students plastic bags filled with 100-200 seeds that looked liked those below...

 Once they had the bags, I asked students to talk about "Things they notice" and "Questions they have" about the bag full of seeds.  I wanted them to notice the really small helicopters in addition to the regular helicopters.

Some groups noticed this, most groups focused on the flight abilities, greenness, moisture levels and how the helicopters are different from those they usually see flying around.  This was a good opportunity for students to remind themselves of water content in cells and how I picked these off of the tree before they dried out and flew much better.

Many other groups focused on the colors and how they were mostly green in a portion and red/brown on the wing.  Many believe the green being closer to the stem is based on still getting nutrients and are "still alive".

Besides these interesting observations, my goal was for students to be able to connect the failure of many of the seeds to develop properly is a reminder that plants go through natural selection, have mutations, and have cells that work similar to animals.  After the initial discussion I draw students attention to the malformed helicopter seeds (see the seed on the left in this image.)

 I then have students tally the successful and not successful seeds as a way of determining the success rate of the tree to produce seeds.  The first image would be 4 successful and 2 unsuccessful (far left and far right), for a 66.67% success rate.  Here is a technology integration where I am beginning to introduce students to spreadsheets to calculate large group success rate and failure rates.

During this activity, I draw students attention to the lack of fertilization during most human cycles.  I also describe to students the percentage of human miscarriages.  Students brainstorm potential reasons why the success rate is not 100%.
Common responses from students...
-Mutation
-Deadly recessive genes combining
-Lack of nutrients

I would have liked them to make more connections to meiosis and use more terminology but they didn't.  I need more vocabulary scaffolds next time.

This activity helps work on the following...
I think students are more likely to view plants as evolving and going through natural selection.
Pollination as sexual reproduction (students struggle with the idea that plants sexually reproduce).
Application of percentage outside of math class and sports.

In closing, 1 in 5 humans are disabled.  Maybe I shouldn't have title the failures as such.  We tend to hide this.  Here is an interesting reaction to Disney based on their lack of disabled princesses.