Handbook of Nature-Study · Lesson CXXXIX · Topic 21: Flower families: the composites
139. The black-eyed Susan
Goal: Your child uses the composite outline on a black-eyed Susan and watches its disk-flowers bloom in a ring that climbs the cone day by day.
You'll need
- Nature notebook, pencil and colored pencils
- A hand lens (magnifying glass)
- One or two black-eyed Susans (a garden or roadside plant)
What's in the book
A Teacher's Story about “the yellow daisy, or black-eyed Susan,” and a one-line lesson that sends you to the outline in Lesson CXXXV.
The lesson, step by step
When and where
Black-eyed Susans bloom in summer, about July to September, in dry fields, roadsides and gardens.
The leading thought
This flower should be studied by the outline given in Lesson CXXXV.
Banners and cone
Read from the Teacher's Story:
The ten to twenty-ray flowers wave rich, orange banners around the cone of purple-brown disk-flowers.
Count the rays on your flower. Is it between ten and twenty?
Blossoming upward
then day by day the blossoming circle climbs toward the apex—a beautiful way of blossoming upward.
With the lens, find the ring of open disk-flowers on the cone. Look for orange pollen being pushed out of the dark tubes.
The shingles
Describe the shape of these bracts. Are they set in regular, overlapping rows? Are they rough or smooth?
Comstock says these bracts are long, narrow and hairy and spread out flat below the flower-head.
Nature notebook
Draw the flower from the side so the cone shows. Mark the ring of open florets. Tomorrow, look again and draw where the ring has moved.
Afterwards
Mark one flower with a loose twist tie and check it each day for a week: how many days until the ring reaches the top of the cone?