ILLINOIS NATURAL HISTORY SURVEY MANUAL 1 



MARCH 1935 



Wild Flowers 



WHERE THEY GROW AND HOW THEY ARE FORMED 



Ye field flowers! the gardens eclipse you 't is true: 

 Yet wildlings of nature, I dote upon you, 



For ye waft me to summers of old 

 When the earth teemed around me with fairy delight, 

 And when daisies and buttercups gladdened my sight, 



Like treasures ot silver and gold. 



Field Flowers — Thomas Campbell 



WHY" is the dominant color of vegetation green? It is be- 

 cause most plants contain millions of tiny round or oval 

 bodies which are filled with a substance that happens to be 

 green. Because it is green this substance is called chlorophyll^ 

 meaning leaf green. 



Chlorophyll is one of the most important things on earth 

 because it enables the plants that have it to manufacture food 

 from carbon dioxide and water. Either we eat the plants or 

 animals do; in the first case chlorophyll is of direct importance 

 in human food and in the second it is indirectly concerned, tor 

 people may eat the meat of such grazing animals as cattle and 

 sheep. Or, chlorophyll may be important in the lives of things 

 man uses, such as the wood of trees for houses and furniture, 

 herbs for medicines, and numberless extracts in the chemistry 

 of certain industries. 



Importance of flowers. — Like other living things, plants 

 grow old and die. Therefore, they must reproduce that there 

 may be a constant supply of plants year after year. Flowers 

 are the structures primarily concerned with reproduction; to 

 understand this relationship is to know the flowers' true im- 

 portance. Secondly, flowers are beautiful in combinations of 

 colors, shapes, sizes and numbers ot parts that are truly astonish- 

 ing and worthv a lifetime of studv. 



