Handbook of Nature-Study · Lesson CLXII · Topic 24: Summer and fall garden flowers
162. Salvia, or scarlet sage
Goal: Your child works the salvia's stamen “levers” with a pencil, the way a bee does, and watches bees and hummingbirds at the flowers.
You'll need
- Nature notebook, pencil and colored pencils
- A hand lens (magnifying glass)
- Salvia (scarlet sage) in a garden or pot
- A sharp pencil
- A small knife or scissors for the adult
What's in the book
A Teacher's Story (it says Darwin used the sage to show flower mechanisms) with a photograph, and the lesson: Leading thought, Method and seven questions.
The lesson, step by step
When and where
Comstock says late September or October is best, when other flowers are mostly gone and bees work hard on the salvia. Hummingbirds visit it too. Bees will be busy on these flowers: watch quietly from a little distance and don't swat.
The leading thought
This flower has the bracts and calyx scarlet instead of green, and this makes it a brilliant mass of color to please our eyes and attract the pollen-carrying insects. Its anthers are arranged at the tip of two levers, which the insects push up and down as they enter the flower, thus becoming dusted with pollen.
Red everywhere
How does the calyx of the salvia differ from that of other flowers in color? How does it differ from the corolla in texture?
What is the shape of the corolla? How does it make a hood over the entrance to the tube?
Work the levers
Thrust your pencil into an uninjured flower and see if the anthers in the hood are moved by it. How?
Push the pencil slowly into the tube and watch the hood. Look for pollen on the pencil. Then an adult slits another flower open to see the levers.
Stigma and nectar
Where is the stigma? How does it receive pollen from visiting insects?
Do you ever see bees getting the nectar from fallen flowers? Do they get it from the “front” or the “back door?”
Compare
Compare the mechanism of the stamens of the scarlet sage with the mechanism of the stamens of the common garden sage.
If you have kitchen sage in the garden, try the pencil test on its flowers too.
Nature notebook
Draw a salvia flower from the side, with the pencil going in and an arrow showing how the anthers swing down.