Life of a Primrose, Part 6 (Natural History Lesson)

Adapted from "The Life of a Primrose" in The Fairy-Land of Science, by Arabella B. Buckley.  Those who have read Charlotte Mason's first volume, Home Education, may remember vaguely that she did not seem to approve of pulling flowers apart for study.  This is what she actually says:  "Is it advisable, then, to teach the children the elements of natural science, of biology, botany, zoology? on the whole, no: the dissection even of a flower is painful to a sensitive child, and, during the first six or eight years of life, I would not teach them any botany which should necessitate the pulling of flowers to bits; much less should they be permitted to injure or destroy any (not noxious) form of animal life."  But we will assume that the students following these lessons were over the age of eight. 

You may want to begin by looking at a rough diagram of the parts of a flower--any of these images may help.  Do your students already know the names of the parts?  Even better:  find some real flowers of this type to examine. 

We have now seen how a plant springs up, feeds itself, grows, stores up food, withers, and dies; but we have said nothing yet about its beautiful flowers or how it forms its seeds.

If we look down close to the bottom of the leaves in a primrose root in spring-time, we shall always find three or four little green buds nestling in among the leaves, and day by day we may see the stalk of these buds lengthening till they reach up into the open sunshine, and then the flower opens and shows its beautiful pale-yellow crown.

We all know that seeds are formed in the flower, and that the seeds are necessary to grow into new plants. But do we know the history of how they are formed, or what is the use of the different parts of the bud? Let us examine them all, and then I think you will agree with me that this is not the least wonderful part of the plant.

Remember that the seed is the one important thing and then notice how the flower protects it. First, look at the outside green covering, which we call the calyx. See how closely it fits in the bud, so that no insect can creep in to gnaw the flower, nor any harm come to it from cold or blight.

Then, when the calyx opens, notice that the yellow leaves which form the crown or corolla (ignore the Toyota, scroll down to the plant version), are each placed alternately with one of the calyx leaves, so that anything which got past the first covering would be stopped by the second.

Lastly, when the delicate corolla has opened out, look at those curious yellow bags just at the top of the tube (top flower on the right). What is their use?

But I fancy I see two or three little questioning faces which seem to say, "I see no yellow bags at the top of the tube."

Well, I cannot tell whether you can or not in the specimen you have in your hand; for one of the most curious things about primrose flowers is, that some of them have these yellow bags at the top of the tube and some of them hidden down right in the middle.  (Fantastic photos here) (Note to teacher: if you are examining some other kind of flower--since we don't have English primroses here--this will probably not apply.  Primroses are a distylous species; others are named here.)

But this I can tell you: those of you who have got no yellow bags at the top will have a round knob there (see the flower on the left), and will find the yellow bags buried in the tube. Those, on the other hand, who have the yellow bags at the top will find the knob half way down the tube.

Now for the use of these yellow bags, which are called the anthers of the stamens, the stalk on which they grow being called the filament or thread. If you can manage to split them open you will find that they have a yellow powder in them, called pollen, the same as the powder which sticks to your nose when you put it into a lily; and if you look with a magnifying glass at the little green knob in the centre of the flower, you will probably see some of this yellow dust sticking on it. We will leave it there for a time.

  Students to narrate at this point.

Now we will examine the body called the pistil, to which the knob belongs.

Pull off the yellow corolla (which will come off quite easily), and turn back the green leaves. You will then see that the knob stands on the top of a column, and at the bottom of this column there is a round ball, which is a vessel for holding the seeds.  In the middle of the ball, in a cluster, there are a number of round transparent little bodies, looking something like round green orange-cells full of juice. They are really cells full of protoplasm, with one little dark spot in each of them, which by-and-by is to make our little plantlet that we found in the seed. (Do they look a bit like the inside of a cucumber?)  

"These, then, are seeds," you will say. Not yet; they are only ovules, or little bodies which may become seeds. If they are left as they are they would all wither and die. But those little grains of pollen, which we saw sticking to the knob at the top, are coming down to help them. As soon as these yellow grains touch the sticky knob or stigma, as it is called, they throw out tubes, which grow down the column until they reach the ovules. In each one of these they find a tiny hole, and into this they creep, and then they pour into the ovule all the protoplasm from the pollen grain which is sticking above, and this enables it to grow into a real seed, with a tiny plantlet inside. This is how the plant forms its seed to bring up new little ones next year, while the leaves and the roots are at work preparing the necessary food.

Think sometimes when you walk in the woods, how hard at work the little plants and big trees are all around you. You breathe in the nice fresh oxygen they have been throwing out, and little think that it is they who are making the country so fresh and pleasant, and that while they look as if they were doing nothing but enjoying the bright sunshine, they are really fulfilling their part in the world by the help of this sunshine; earning their food from the ground; working it up; turning their leaves where they can best get light (and in this it is chiefly the violet sun-waves that help them), growing even at night, by making new cells out of the food they have taken in the day; storing up for the winter; putting out their flowers and making their seeds, and all the while smiling so pleasantly in quiet nooks and sunny dells that it makes us glad to see them.

A natural history lesson: Primrose Seeds

Book studied:  "The Life of a Primrose," in The Fairy-Land of Science, by Arabella B. Buckley.  First part of the chapter only for today.

Have you ever seen any primroses? What do you think they look like? In England, they are one of the first wildflowers to come up in spring, in March when we still have snow on the ground here. They are not roses; they are in a family called the primulas, which also includes cowslips and pimpernels. Their name comes from the Italian words for “first thing.” The best-known English primroses have pale yellow flowers, with five heart-shaped petals and bright yellow-orange centres.  (Sometimes they are other colours.) They have been a very popular decoration on things like teacups.  Look at these photos and see if you can pick out the primroses. (An image search for "primroses embroidered" also brought up some great photos of all kinds of primroses--cookies, crocheted, stitched, and real.)

(Photo of Primula vulgaris found here)

We don’t have the same species of primroses in Canada, although we do have a bluish-purple wildflower in the same family called the Dwarf Canadian Primrose or Lake Mistassini Primrose. There is a really interesting story about how Louis the Sixteenth’s personal botanist discovered the Canadian primrose for him in 1786, but this lesson is about English primroses.

(Photo of Primula mistassinica found here)

The teacher giving this lesson had asked each student to bring a primrose flower, or a whole plant if they could find one. This is what she told them: 

WHEN the dreary days of winter and the early damp days of spring are passing away, and the warm bright sunshine has begun to pour down upon the grassy paths of the wood, who does not love to go out and bring home posies of violets, and bluebells, and primroses? We wander from one plant to another picking a flower here and a bud there, as they nestle among the green leaves, and we make our rooms sweet and gay with the tender and lovely blossoms. But tell me, did you ever stop to think, as you added flower after flower to your nosegay, how the plants which bear them have been building up their green leaves and their fragile buds during the last few weeks? If you had visited the same spot a month before, a few of last year's leaves, withered and dead, would have been all that you would have found. And now the whole wood is carpeted with delicate green leaves, with nodding bluebells, and pale-yellow primroses, as if a fairy had touched the ground and covered it with fresh young life. And our fairies have been at work here; the fairy "Life," of whom we know so little, though we love her so well and rejoice in the beautiful forms she can produce; the fairy sunbeams with their invisible influence kissing the tiny shoots and warming them into vigor and activity; the gentle rain-drops, the balmy air, all these have been working, while you or I passed heedlessly by; and now we come and gather the flowers they have made, and too often forget to wonder how these lovely forms have sprung up around us.

There is a beautiful little poem by Tennyson, which says—

"Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies;
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower; but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is."

Do you remember two years ago in school when we sprouted different kinds of birdseed in a shoebox? Do you remember examining the inside of seeds, seeing how everything was in there, ready to make the plant grow? Since flower seeds are too small to examine easily, the teacher here soaked almond-kernels for the students to split in half and examine. We will use dried beans from our garden.  This is what the teacher said:

If you peel the two skins off your seed, the two halves will slip apart quite easily. One of these halves will have a small dent at the pointed end, while in the other half you will see a little lump, which fitted into the dent when the two halves were joined. This little lump is a young plant, and the two halves of the almond are the seed-leaves which hold the plantlet, and feed it till it can feed itself. The rounded end of the plantlet sticking out of the almond, is the beginning of the root, while the other end will in time become the stem. If you look carefully, you will see two little points at this end, which are the tips of future leaves. Only think how minute this plantlet must be in a primrose, where the whole seed is scarcely larger than a grain of sand! Yet in this tiny plantlet lies hid the life of the future plant. 

Narration to follow.  In the next lesson we will talk about what happens to the primrose seed when it falls into the ground.  Here is some homework for you:  go and look in our dish cupboards, both the everyday dishes and the teacups, and see if you can find any decorations of primroses.

Note:  we decided to enhance this part of the study by taking some of the soaked beans and letting them sprout (glass jar with damp paper towels).  We've done that other times through the years, but it seemed like a good opportunity for hands-on review.

Linked from the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival.