5 6 



Handbook of Nature-Study 



8. Watch the bees working on asters, and find where they thrust their 

 tongues to reach the nectar. 



9. Study an aster plant in November, and describe the seeds and how 

 they are scattered. 



Every child loves 

 it is always at hand 



Daisy florets. 



1, Disk- flower in pollen stage; 



2, Disk- flower in stigma'stage; 



3, Ray-flower. All enlarged. 



Gathering daises. 

 Photo by Verne Morton. 



THE WHITE DAISY 

 Teacher's Story 



this flower, and yet it is not well understood; 



for study from June until the frosts have laid 

 waste the fields. However much enjoyment 

 we get from the study of this beautiful flower- 

 head, we should study the plant as a weed 

 also, for it is indeed a pest to those farmers who 

 do not practice a rotation of crops. Its root] is 

 long and tenacious of the soil, and it ripens many 

 seeds which mingle with the grass seed, and thus 

 the farmer sows it to his own undoing. The 

 bracts of the involucre, or the shingles of the 

 daisy-house, are rather long, and have parch- 

 mentlike margins. They overlap in two or three 

 rows. In the daisy flower-head, the banner- 

 flowers are white ; there may be twenty or thirty 

 of these, making a beautiful frame for the golden- 

 yellow disk-flowers. The banner is rather broad, 

 is veined, and toothed at the tip. The banner- 

 flower has a pistil which shows its two-parted 

 stigma at the base of the banner, and it matures a 

 seed. The disk-flowers are brilliant yellow, 

 tubular, rather short, with the five points of the 



