Flowers Shown to the Children Part 1

Flowers Shown to the Children.

by C. E. Smith.

TO

ALISON MARY OGILVIE

AND

DOROTHY CLARK

Dear Children,--If you were old enough to go to the bookseller and ask for a book that would tell you about the flowers you see growing in the woods and fields in spring and summer-time, you would find there were already a great many books which had been written with that purpose.

If you examined a few of these books, you would discover that in many the pictures of the flowers were not coloured, and that in these books the flowers were very difficult to recognise. And I think you would at once tell the bookseller you wished a flower-book with coloured pictures, where the flowers looked like real flowers.

Then you would examine more books, some of which have beautiful coloured pictures showing every flower that grows in our country. These books are very large and cost a great deal of money. You would see, too, quite small books which said they could tell about the common flowers we find in our country walks. And I think you would buy one of these.

But next day, suppose you were to find a bright blue flower growing in the field, and wished very much to know what it was called. You would open the flower-book and begin to look at the pictures, and there you would discover that the first picture showed a yellow flower, the next a red, the third a purple, a white or a blue, and you might have to turn over all the pages in the book before you found the flower you sought.

After you had looked at the picture of your blue flower, I think you would wish to know something more about the flower, and would like to read the writing to find out what it said.

But I am afraid you would not be able to understand what the flower-book told. There would be such long words telling about things you had never heard of, and you would begin to wonder if only older people could find out what books had to say about flowers.

Now this new flower-book is written just for the purpose of telling little children about the flowers. And in order to make it easy, the blue flowers have all been put together in one part of the book, the yellow in another, and the white in a third group; so you can at once know in what part of the book you will see a picture of any flower you find.

And I have made the writing which tells about each flower very easy, with as few new words as possible, so I hope you will be able to read it yourself, and find out how many wonderful and beautiful things there are in the flower-world which you might not notice unless you were told what to look for.

There are four new words you must learn to understand before you begin to read this book.

The first word is CALYX, and it means a covering. When the flowers are still babies, or buds, as they are called in flowerland, they are so soft and tender that too much rain, or a cold wind or a night of frost would do them harm. So nearly every flower has been given a warm covering which is folded closely round the tiny bud to protect it.

Sometimes this calyx, or covering, is all in one piece like a cup, and the bud sits safely inside. But very often it is made up of five or six or more pieces, and when this is the case, these separate pieces are called sepals.

These SEPALS are very often green, like leaves, but you may have white sepals, or yellow sepals, or blue sepals or pink sepals. You will learn all about them after you know all that is in this flower-book and are able to read a more difficult one.

The third new word you must know the meaning of, is PETALS. Nearly every flower has petals. They are the beautiful coloured leaves of the flower that are within the calyx. It is these lovely petals, pink in the rose, yellow in the b.u.t.tercup, red in the poppy, and blue in the forget-me-not, that most of us mean when we talk of flowers, and it is these soft, silky petals which attract us, and not us only, but the birds and the bees and the b.u.t.terflies, which all visit the gay flowers.

These petals are among the most beautiful things in this wonderful world.

The fourth new word you must try to remember is STAMENS. The stamens are not very attractive, but they are very important to the flower, as without them there could be no new seeds, and if there were no new seeds we should presently have no more flowers.

The stamens are usually fine, slender threads which grow either singly, or in little bunches or in a ring within the circle of petals. Each slender thread has a fat little head at the end, a purple head, or a pink head, or a red head, or, very often, a yellow head. And this stamen head is filled with fine powder which is needed to make the new seeds grow.

These four, CALYX, SEPALS, PETALS, and STAMENS, are the only new words you will have to learn in order to understand all that is written in this little flower-book, and I hope that, when summer comes, you will try to find all the plants that I have written about here, and that you will be able to tell the names, without reading them, of every flower of which Miss Kelman has made you a picture.--Yours sincerely,

C. E. SMITH

PLATE I

1. LESSER CELANDINE

This is one of the first flowers you will see in springtime. It covers the ground in patches in every wood, and you will find it too under the hedges and on banks by the roadside.

The flower has eight long narrow petals, which are much narrower and more pointed than those of the b.u.t.tercup.

When the Celandine is still in bud the outside of these petals is beautifully streaked with purple. But when the flower opens in the sunshine, the petals are a bright yellow colour, and are as glossy as if they were wet.

In the centre of the flower there is a ring of yellow stamens with a cl.u.s.ter of green seed-vessels amongst them.

Behind the coloured petals are three narrow pointed sepals. These protect the flower when it is in bud.

The green leaves of the Celandine are dark and glossy, with wavy edges, and each leaf has a stalk of its own.

If you look carefully at one of these leaves you will see that the stalk is flattened at the foot. This helps it to clasp the main stem more easily.

The root is divided into five or six hard little brown fingers. These brown fingers are called tubers, and each tuber, if planted separately, will produce a new plant.

2. BULBOUS b.u.t.tERCUP

In spring the Bulbous b.u.t.tercup is found everywhere, filling the meadows with its sunshiny flowers.

Each flower has five glossy yellow petals which do not lie flat open as in the Celandine, but form a cup, a yellow cup or b.u.t.tercup.

At the base of each petal you find a small honey pouch, which the bees love to visit.

When the flower is still in bud, the yellow petals are almost covered by five pale-green hairy sepals. You can see only the yellow tips peeping out. But when the flower opens, these hairy green sepals fold back close round the stalk.

In the centre of the flower is a thick cl.u.s.ter of yellow-headed stamens with a knot of green seed-vessels in the middle.

The stalk on which the flower grows is slightly hairy, and has a narrow groove on one side.

The root is shaped like a small turnip, and has a great many white threads growing out of it.

The leaves of this b.u.t.tercup are dark green, with soft hairs all over them. They are shaped very irregularly, and are deeply cut up all round the edges.

3. MEADOW b.u.t.tERCUP

The Meadow b.u.t.tercup is abundant all over the country. It grows beside the Daisy in every field and hedge-bank.

In this b.u.t.tercup the flower has five bright glossy yellow petals, which open out flat and are not cup-shaped as in the Bulbous b.u.t.tercup.