Read Ebook: Flowers Shown to the Children by Smith C E Chisholm Louey Editor Kelman Janet Harvey Illustrator

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Ebook has 769 lines and 28142 words, and 16 pages

The flowers are cup-shaped, and they grow singly on short stalks which branch from the main stem near the top. Each flower has five white petals streaked with fine veins.

Within the petal-cup there is a ring of ten stamens with yellow heads, and in the centre of the flower you can see a green seed-vessel like a small pear, with two wavy points coming out of the top.

Behind the white petals you find a tiny green calyx-cup, made up of five little sepals. These sepals are joined together at the bottom, but round the mouth of the cup the five points stand up separately.

The reddish-green stems are slender and wiry. They have single, little leaves growing up them, with a short space in between each leaf.

Only some of these stems have flowers at the top. Others end in a tuft of leaves, and never bear any flowers. These leafy stems are clothed with leaves all the way to the tip, and each leaf is very small and narrow. At the end the leaf is divided into three small fingers, and these fingers, as well as the stem, are covered with dark hairs.

This water-loving plant is very common all over the country in marshes and bogs and by the sides of ditches. It blooms in summer.

The plant is easily recognised by its round leaves. These have wavy edges, and fine green veins running from the centre of the leaf to the edge.

The stalk is fastened exactly underneath the centre of the leaf, and it is soft and juicy and covered with fine hairs.

The flowers of the Pennywort are greenish-white, tinged with red. These flowers grow in little clusters of three or four together at the end of short stalks which spring from the root, close beside the leaf-stalk. But these flower-stalks are so short, and the flowers are so small, you recognise the round leaves long before you discover that there are any flowers.

The Pennywort is one of those plants with a creeping stem, which lies along the surface of the ground. The stem is a delicate, pale pink, and wherever a bunch of flowers and leaves rises, you find a tuft of white, hair-like roots growing down into the mud.

It is a great delight to discover this dainty plant. It is not very common, but in summer and autumn you find it blooming on heaths in many parts of the country.

The Wintergreen flowers are not unlike Lily-of-the-Valley. They are delicate, creamy white bells, which hang from short drooping stalks near the top of a slender stem.

These bells have five ivory petals slightly tinged with pink, which form a dainty fairy cup.

Within the cup there is a ring of ten stamens with heavy yellow-heads, clustered round the tip of the green seed-vessel. This green tip rises in the centre, like a slender pillar, a good way above the stamens.

Behind the ivory cup is a green star, with five points. These points are the sepals. Notice that wherever a flower-stalk joins the main stem a tiny pointed green leaf appears.

The soft juicy stem is twisted near the top and is four-sided. It grows straight from the root.

The dark glossy leaves of the Wintergreen are spoon-shaped, with wavy edges. They spring from the ground with very short stalks, and they remain on the plant all winter.

This slender plant grows in bogs and damp places all over Britain and blooms in autumn.

It has large white flowers, which grow singly at the end of tall green stalks. These stalks are square and slightly twisted.

Each flower has five creamy-white petals, covered with delicate veins. Inside this ring of petals, lying at the bottom, are five curious scales, like tiny hands. The hands have each ten fingers, tipped with yellow dots, so you may count fifty dots altogether. On the scales are glands which hold honey. This, you may be sure, the bees very soon find out.

In the centre of the flower is a round pale green seed-vessel, and in between the scales with the tiny yellow dots lie five fat stamens with heavy yellow-heads.

The Grass of Parnassus has also five green sepals, whose tips you can see appearing in between each of the five white petals, as you look down into the flower.

Most of the green leaves of this plant grow from the root. They are oval, with smooth edges, and each leaf has a stalk of its own.

But often you will find a single leaf clasping the flower-stalk half way up its stem, and this leaf has no stalk of its own.

The Common Bladder Campion is to be found all summer by the edge of fields and pastures.

It is a tall, slender plant, with white flowers which grow each on a thin short stalk, two or three close together at the end of a smooth stem.

The flowers have five petals, and each petal has V-shaped notches cut in the outer edge. The lower part of the petals is hidden from sight in the calyx-cup.

The five sepals which form this calyx-cup are joined together, and they are swollen like a bladder. This bladder is covered with a fine network of reddish veins, and has five teeth round its mouth.

You will easily recognise the Common Bladder Campion by this curious calyx.

In this white Bladder Campion the stamens and the seed-vessel are found in the same flower, and you can always see the forked tip of the seed-vessel, rising among the dark green heads of the stamens.

The leaves of the Common Bladder Campion are smooth and shiny. They grow opposite each other in pairs, and wherever a pair joins the main stem, the stem is swollen like the joint of a finger.

The Sea Campion grows by the seashore, by the side of mountain streams, or on wet rocks among the hills.

It blooms all summer, and although it is really a smaller plant than the Common White Campion, the flowers are larger.

These flowers have five white petals, each with a V-shaped notch in the outer edge. Half way down these petals there is a white-fringed scale. These scales stand up like a crown round the inside of the flower.

The calyx is swollen like a bladder, and is covered with fine veins, the same as in the Common Campion. Round the mouth it has five sharp teeth.

In this plant the flowers do not grow in groups of two or three. Each flower appears singly at the end of a slender stalk, and there are several pairs of small leaves a good way below the flower.

These leaves are slightly thick and juicy. They grow so close together on the ground that it looks as if it were covered with a green mat.

This humble little plant is to be found everywhere on heaths and meadows and pastures. It blooms plentifully in summer and autumn. The flowers of the Eyebright grow in clusters of four to six at the end of the main stem. They are white, or pale lilac streaked with pink, and they are small and unattractive. The petals are joined together into a tube, with two lips at the mouth. The upper lip has two divisions, and the lower lip is cut up into three. They appear to be five unequal petals standing round the mouth of the tube.

Inside the tube are four purple-headed stamens, two long and two short. You can see them appearing at the mouth of the tube, also the slender white point which rises from the seed-vessel.

The calyx is a green cup with four deeply pointed teeth at the mouth. The tube of the flower goes down into the cup, and the five unequal petals stand round its mouth.

The Eyebright stem varies much in height. Sometimes you find it only about two inches from the ground, and in other places it has straggled eighteen inches high. These stems are very hairy.

The leaves grow opposite each other in pairs up the stem. They have no stalks, and the edges are cut all round into blunt teeth. They are rather hairy leaves, and are dark green and crinkled. In shape they are oval with a blunt point at the end.

The White Dead Nettle is fairly common everywhere except in the North of Scotland. You find it in waste places, by the roadside, and on ditch banks, and it blooms from spring to autumn.

This is a much more attractive plant than the Stinging Nettle we have all learned to avoid.

The flowers grow in beautiful whorls or circles round the stem. In this plant the flowers are snowy white, tinged with green, but in other Dead Nettles you find them rose pink or deep purple.

There are often as many as eighteen flowers on one whorl. The flower petals are joined together into a tube which stands in a shallow calyx-cup, edged with five very long, sharp teeth. The mouth of the white flower-tube is cut very irregularly. The upper part bends over like a hood, and underneath this hood are hidden the four long stamens. The lower part of the flower-tube hangs down like a tongue, and it is fringed and rounded at the end. Amongst the stamens you see the slender forked point which rises from the seed-vessel.

The leaves of the White Dead Nettle are very similar in shape to those of the Stinging Nettle; but they are a paler shade of green. They grow in pairs close to the stem, with a good space in between each pair, and the ring of stalkless flowers clusters round the stem beside them.

This Orchis is common all over the country, where it grows in damp woods, on chalky banks, and in meadows and pastures.

You find it in summer.

The leaves are stained with purplish-black blotches as in the early Purple Orchis, but they are narrower and taper more to a point. Notice the small leaves which cling at intervals to the flower-stalk all the way up.

The flowers grow in a dense cone-shaped head at the top of the flower-stalk. The petals are pale lilac or nearly white, and are spotted or streaked with purple. They are curiously shaped. The broad petal, which folds back like a hanging lip, is deeply waved round the edge, and behind it there is a long lilac spur.

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