By Julia McNair Wright
NEITHER age, learning, nor fortune are needed to enable one to love and admire these gracious children of beauty—the flowers.
When the chill winds of autumn sound a knell for their departure, we have a sense of loneliness and loss. As the winter passes we long for the days when the blossoms shall come again.
The first tiny blossom of the star-flower; the first little tasseled bloom on the birch; the first adder’s tongue, or violet, or broad, white salver of the mandrake flower; the snowy banners of the dogwood; the gray-white of the brave little plantain-leaved everlasting, fill all hearts with delight.
The life object of the flower is the production of seed. All the parts of the flower are in some way fitted to further that end. What is the story of the flower?
The stem and branches having developed a certain amount of leafage, may at length put forth blossoms. These spring, as leaves do, from the tips or axils of the branches. In truth, a flower is a modified branch, and all its parts are modified leaves. We will pass over this distinction of science, and will consider the flower as we popularly think and speak of it, the beautiful producer of seeds.
What is called a perfect flower we will examine in the common buttercup of the fields. At the top of the stem we find a cup or calyx of five narrow, separate green leaves, called sepals; these form the outer wrapping of the bud, and maintain and protect the more delicate inner parts of a flower. Within the calyx is the corolla—five glossy, yellow, roundish petals, set in a circle; within this we have another ring of downy, bright-yellow stamens, and still within these, protected by all the others, certain yellow pistils, fewer and firmer in texture than the stamens.
All of these four rings of parts are placed upon the fleshy, enlarged top of the stem, which is called the receptacle. The yellow of this flower is very yellow, and the stem and leaves are very green. The stem and leaves of our buttercups are hairy; the whole plant is provided with a sharp, stinging juice.