Handbook of Nature-Study · Lesson CCVIII · Topic 31: Flowering shrubs and small trees
208. The mountain laurel
Goal: Your child can show how a laurel flower's spring-loaded stamens fling pollen onto a visiting bee.
You'll need
- A laurel branch with buds and open flowers
- A pencil
- A hand lens (magnifying glass)
- A nature notebook and a pencil (colored pencils if you have them)
What's in the book
The lesson has a leading thought and ten observations on the leaves, the bud, the open flower with its ten pockets, the springing stamens, the pollen, the pistil and the fruit, ending with Theron Brown's poem "The Mountain Laurel."
The lesson, step by step
Safety first
All parts of mountain laurel are poisonous if eaten. Look and touch only with a pencil, and wash hands after handling a branch. Ask before cutting one.
When and where
Late May and June, in rocky woods and on hillsides. The book says any kind of laurel will do. You need buds and open flowers on the same branch.
The leading thought
The laurel blossom is set with ten springs, and each spring acts as a sling in throwing pollen upon visiting insects, thus making sure that the visitor will carry pollen to other waiting flowers.
The bud and the flower
Take a blossom bud. What is its shape? How many sides to the pyramid-like tip?
In the open blossom, what do you see of the ten ridges, or keels, which you noticed in the bud? How does each one of these grooves end? What does the laurel blossom keep in these ten pockets?
Spring the trap
Touch one of the ten filaments with a pencil and note what happens.
Touch the filaments with a pencil and see how far they will sling the pollen.
Why?
What is the use to the flower of this arrangement for throwing pollen? What insects set free the stamen-springs?
Would they be likely to throw their pollen on the stigma of their own flower?
Nature notebook
Draw an open flower from above showing the ten bent stamens tucked into their pockets. Then draw one stamen after it has sprung.
Answers to the book's problems
Each of the ten stamens has its anther tucked in a little pocket in the cup, and its stalk is bent like a bow. When a bee lands and jostles it, the stamen springs up and flings sticky threads of pollen onto the bee, which carries it to another flower. The stigma stands well above the anthers, so a flower seldom pollinates itself.
Worked out for this site from the scan. If a number in your copy differs, trust the book.