One day your teacher brought to school a branch broken from the cherry tree. This she placed in water, standing the tumbler on the sunny window sill; and now its buds have burst into a glory of white blossoms.
To-day I want you to study the flower of the cherry; for if you know all about this flower, which is put together in a rather simple way, one that is easy to study, it will not be so difficult for you to understand other, less simple flowers.
You may wonder why I do not wait till the cherry tree outside is in blossom; but if we waited till May, other flowers, which are not built on quite so simple a plan, would have come and gone, and you would not have been able to understand them so well as if you had first studied the simple make-up of the cherry blossom.
Last fall we learned a little about this flower, but we had only its picture to help us in our work: so I think it well to begin all over again.
In looking at the cherry blossom (Fig. [160]), we should first notice the green cup which holds the rest of the flower.
This cup is divided into five green leaves.
During the babyhood of the flower, when it was quite too young to face the cold, windy world, these green leaves were folded together so as to shut away from all harm its more delicate parts.
Above this green cup we see a circle made up of five white leaves. These pretty leaves are spread outward as if they were quite proud of themselves, and eager to attract attention.
And that is just what they are trying to do; for the cherry blossom is not wise enough to know that here in the schoolroom there are no bee visitors to bring it yellow dust, and to help it grow into a cherry. These leaves are the little handkerchiefs which the cherry tree, just like the apple tree we read about long ago, uses in signaling the bees.
