The Flower 143 



HOME WORK. 



Design some patterns suitable for embroidery, for wall papers, or 

 for book covers, based on flowers. Let the general style and pattern 

 of branching be true to nature. Show some flowers in bud, some 

 full open and others in seed ; and in doing so show that you know 

 which parts of the inflorescence will flower first and which last. 



Lesson 4. THE FERTILISATION OF FLOWERS. 

 Season. Third week in June. 

 Materials required for each pupil. 



One head of each of the following flowers : white 

 dead nettle, stinging nettle, honeysuckle, lime, flowering 

 grass, elder, rosebay, sage. 



A single flower of each of the following: pansy, 

 foxglove, nasturtium, sweet pea. 



When a flower contains both stamens and pistil it 

 is obvious that the simplest way in which it can be 

 fertilised is for pollen from the stamens to fall straight 

 on to the pistil. In many cases this self-fertilisation, as 

 it is called, is what occurs. If this, however, goes on 

 for many generations, and the flowers never get any 

 pollen from another plant, they tend to produce fewer 

 seeds, and the young plants which grow from these 

 seeds become weakly. Nature has, therefore, several 

 ways of carrying pollen about from one plant to another 

 and so cross-fertilising them. Her two chief agents are 

 insects and the wind, and flowers are adapted to which- 

 ever of these is going to be used. 



All the garden flowers you know best are fertilised 

 by insects such as bees, butterflies, moths, or flies, 

 which are attracted to the flowers by their bright 

 colour and in many cases by their scent. If this was 



