20 FIVE CONSPICUOUS PLANT FAMILIES. 



themselves : " Brighten up the earth, appear in every waste 

 corner, wave and bend with the breeze. Things are looking 

 humdrum here ; make the earth a merry carnival of dancing 

 colour." 



The flowers are rather difficult for a beginner to analyse with 

 reference to their species, of which there are over ten thou- 

 sand. It is, however, not so much what one learns in books 

 about them as it is what one finds out. They may be easily 

 recognised by bearing in mind that the flowers are closely 

 packed together in heads that are surrounded by an involucre. 

 The individual flowers are tubular or ligulate, as in the thistle 

 and dandelion, and again both tubular and ligulate flowers are 

 arranged in the same head. In this case they are called ray 

 and disk flowers. The common field daisy is a well-known 

 illustration of the latter. 



