12 1 8 Home Nature-Study Course. 



(5). Study a single blossom. Is it large or small? How many and 

 what shape and color are the sepals? The petals? Are the sepals per- 

 sistent or do they soon fall away? Are the stamens few or many? Do 

 they surround the pistil in a ring or are they attached in separate little 

 bunches or clusters? Do they cohere with a small, delicate petal-like 

 scale placed opposite the real petals ? This is a mark of the native species 

 and if the flowers do not contain these scales the tree from which they 

 were taken was probably a European Linden. Is the pistil long or 

 short? Club-shaped or cleft at tip? If the pistil- tip or stigma is cleft 

 how many are its lobes? Which seems to mature or wither first, the 

 stamens or the pistil? 



(6). What is the shape and color of the fruit or seed-vessels? How 

 many seeds does each contain? Is its outer coat soft, or tough and 

 woody ? 



(7). Do the tips of the bracts and the fruit-stems hang straight or 

 bend away from each other as the fruit ripens? At about what angle 

 do they separate? Toss a seed-laden stem and bract into the air and 

 watch its fall. Does it drop directly downward or whirl about and 

 sail for some distance before landing? Does an empty bract sail as well 

 as one that bears seeds ? 



(8). Do you know the basswood seedling? Are its cotyledons or 

 seedleaves shaped like the true leaves? If not, how do they differ? 



Facts for Teachers. — The Linden is even more tardy in its bloom than in putting 

 on its leaves. Not until late June or early July does it fling out its fragrant creamy 

 white flowers, but the display is worth waiting for. The blossoms are in clusters, 

 borne in the axils of the leaves, attached to an oblong, delicate pale-green, many- 

 veined, leaf-like bract. Flower-stem and bract are joined together for about a 

 third or one-half their length. The bract is thin and very strong and tapers toward 

 its stem in the American species, but in the European Linden is usually heart- 

 shaped at its base. 



The flowers fairly drip with nectar and the honey-bees toil early and late, adding 

 many pounds of the best quality, clear white honey to their stores during the 

 "basswood blow." The individual flowers are about a half-inch in diameter 

 and creamy white all through. Even the five early-falling sepals are cream-lined 

 though they are palest yellow-green at the back. These remain on each flower 

 only about a day and the nectar is in the cup-shaped hollow at their base. To 

 get it, bees must thrust their tongues between the filaments of the anthers or 

 pollen sacs thus shaking out the pollen and getting themselves well dusted. The 

 five oblong, pointed petals alternate with the sepals and are nearly twice as long. 

 The many stamens with their cream-yellow anthers are gathered in five separate 

 little bunches or clusters and inserted with a small, white petal-like scale, just 

 above the real petals. The pistil is short, stiff and its stigma is cleft into five 

 lobes, which usually do not open till after its own flower's anthers have withered, 

 thus making sure of being fertilized by pollen from a different flower. 



