CHAPTER XVII. 



FLOWERS AND THEIR PARTS. 



Note. — This chapter will contain many new names. We must have 

 them when we study flowers. Do not try to learn them all at once, but 

 find as many flowers as you can and make out each part named in this 

 chapter. You will have the names in mind before you know it. 



To understand the parts of a flower, it is better to take those 

 of the veld. Roses, Carnations, Chrysanthemums, and Dahlias 

 of our gardens delight us with their glorious masses of colour, 

 but by long cultivation they have lost some of the characters 

 which Nature originally gave them. Chrysanthemums (the 

 gold flowers), it is said, have been in cultivation for over 2000 

 years. Enthusiastic cultivators have so put their hearts into 

 showing what a range of colour and size is possible in these 

 old garden favourites, that the flowers themselves have yielded 

 up their own golden hearts to the cause. The centres have 

 grown out into flattened petals, which gradually reveal all the 

 colours they have caught from the sun. 



" The lovely wild flowers are the flowers which God has 

 made." We repeat Jean Ingelow's thought when we come 

 upon Heaths, Nerine, and Orchids in some hidden inaccessible 

 place. But garden flowers have their beauty too — beauty ob- 

 tained by care and skill of those who love them. The wild 

 flowers were so made they can change most wonderfully under 

 cultivation, and lend added cheer and colour and interest to 

 the lives of those far from heath- covered hills or Disa-bordered 

 streams. 



If you examine the flower of Crassula^ you will find on 

 the outside a circle or whorl of green leaves — the calyx; 

 each leaf is a sepal. The calyx is the cover of the flower. In 



131 , 9 * 



