After the child has studied his beans, let him then study the morning-glory and four-o'clock seeds, which store the food separately from the embryo instead of in its seed-leaves. In every seed there is food enough stored up to give the embryo its first start in life.
During the Summer the child can be helped to pass many pleasant hours looking at seed-pods and finding as many kinds as possible. He can discover how the ovaries are placed in the flower and wrapped about by the bright petals, being covered while yet in the bud by the green calyx. He can look at the different forms of ovaries and discover how some, like the bean, have only one compartment or cell, while others, like the apple-core, have five, and yet others, like the poppy pod, have many. If he is interested, he can quickly and unconsciously learn many of the more common botanical terms used in describing plants, so that when he comes to study technical botany he will find it shorn of most of its terrors.
Different Kinds of Ovaries—Bean, Apple-Core, Poppy Pod
Certain botanical terms are valuable both now and later; used simply, just as we talk of table, chair, bed-post, garden-walk, etc., they are, as has been said, learned unconsciously.
Flower—Ovary, Style, Stigma, Stamens, Anthers, Petals, Sepals
In teaching the later facts of the reproductive life, it is a great help for the child to know the names and uses of certain parts of the flower; in many flowers, as for instance the lily, the parts can be seen without pulling the flower to pieces. In the centre is the ovary, as the child already knows. Let him notice the long stalk on top of it and learn to call this the style. On top of the style is a knob—the stigma. Ovary, style, and stigma together make the pistil. Surrounding the pistil are six stamens, each having a slender stem or filament and terminating in a little box; this box is called the anther and is filled with flower-dust or pollen. Around these is a circle of bright petals. In many flowers, outside the petals is a circle of green sepals, which in some plants fall off or turn down when the bud opens.
THE FLOWER
Sepals—usually green and affording protection to the bud.
Petals—usually large and bright.
Stamens—{ filament (stem of anther)
{ anther (containing pollen)
{ ovary (seed-pod)
Pistil—{ style (stem of stigma not always present)
{ stigma (knob at top of style or ovary)