Handbook of Nature-Study · Lesson CLXIV · Topic 24: Summer and fall garden flowers
164. The horseshoe geranium
Goal: Your child learns the names of the flower parts on a geranium, draws and labels them, and starts a new plant from a cutting.
You'll need
- Nature notebook, pencil and colored pencils
- A hand lens (magnifying glass)
- A potted geranium with single flowers
- Scissors (adult helps)
- A small bottle or jar of water
What's in the book
A Teacher's Story about the horseshoe geranium and the lesson: Leading thought, Method and ten questions, then a Wordsworth verse.
The lesson, step by step
When and where
Any time of year, on a sunny windowsill or in the garden. Comstock says to choose a kind with single (not double) flowers.
The leading thought
The geraniums are very much prized as flowers for ornamental beds. Let us see why they are so valued.
A good flower for names
As the parts of this flower are of a very general type, it is an excellent one with which to teach the names and purposes of the flower parts.
Name them together as you find them: sepals (green, outside), petals, stamens (with anthers), and the pistil in the middle.
The leaf
What marking is there on the leaf, which makes us call this a “horseshoe geranium?”
The flower
Are the petals all the same size and shape? How many of them are broad? How many narrow?
How many stamens can you see? What is the color of the filaments and of the anthers? How are the stamens joined at their bases? Can you find any stamens without anthers?
Why gardeners like it
How long is it from the time that the first bud opens until the last bud of the cluster blossoms? What has this to do with making the geranium a valuable ornamental plant?
Tie a thread on one bud cluster and count the open flowers each day.
Nature notebook
Comstock's method:
Each child can make a little drawing of the sepals, petals, stamens and pistil, and label them with the proper names.
Do that page today.
Afterwards
Make a cutting, as Comstock suggests: ~ Place one of the cuttings in a bottle of water and describe how its roots appear and grow. Check it every few days and draw the roots when they appear.
Answers to the book's problems
The leaf has a darker, horseshoe-shaped band. The flowers in a cluster open a few at a time over many days, so the plant stays in bloom a long while.
Worked out for this site from the scan. If a number in your copy differs, trust the book.