Wildflowers and Weeds

Even a sidewalk crack can hold a wildflower, and the plants we call weeds are some of the toughest, cleverest plants around. In their 1898 book, Lina and Adelia Beard wrote about gathering and pressing wild flowers. Today we take photos of most wild plants and leave them growing, and we only pick common weeds.

Things to try

In any order, at your own pace. Tick what you've tried if you like keeping track; ticks stay on this device.

1. Take a flower apartLook closely at a garden flower or a dandelion with a magnifying glass. Find the petals, the green sepals underneath, the dusty stamens, and the pistil in the middle. A good goal: you can draw a flower and label its parts.
2. Learn the picking rulesTalk with a grown-up about when picking is OK. Pick only common weeds such as dandelions and clover, only from your own yard or with the owner's permission, and never in parks or nature preserves. Some wild plants are protected by law. A good goal: you can explain the rules in your own words.
3. Photograph and name tenFind ten wildflowers or weeds and take a photo or make a sketch of each instead of picking it. Name them with a field guide or plant app. A good goal: you've made a ten-plant photo page or sketch page.
4. Know the plants to steer aroundLearn to recognize poison ivy (“leaves of three”) and any other plants a grown-up says to avoid where you live. Look, but don't touch or taste wild plants. A good goal: you can point out the plant to avoid in a picture.
5. Press some weedsPick a few common weed flowers from your own yard and press them between sheets of paper inside a heavy book for one to two weeks. Glue them onto a card with their names. A good goal: you've made one pressed-flower card.
6. Watch a dandelion's lifeMark one dandelion and check it every day. Watch it open in the morning, close at night, and later turn into a puffball of seeds. A good goal: you've drawn at least four stages.
7. Go on a sock walkPull an old fuzzy sock over your shoe and walk through a weedy patch. Count the seeds that hitchhiked on it, then plant the sock in a pot of soil and keep it watered. A good goal: you see what sprouts.
8. Count pollinatorsWatch one patch of flowers for 10 minutes and count the bees, butterflies, and other insects that visit. Try it again on another day. A good goal: you can say which flowers got the most visitors.
9. Teach the picking rulesTeach a younger child or a friend which plants it's OK to pick and why the rest stay put. A good goal: they can tell the rules back to you.

Read about it in the old books

• 📖 Beard sisters, American Girl's Handy Book: Wild Flowers and Their Preservation ↗
• 📖 1911 Handbook for Boys: Plants, Ferns, and Grasses ↗
• 🔗 Handbook of Nature Study lessons: wildflowers and weeds