562 



Handbook of Nature-Study 



THE YELLOW DAISY, OR BLACK-EYED SUSAN 

 Teacher's Story 

 These beautiful, showy flowers have rich contrasts in their color 

 scheme. The ten to twenty-ray flowers wave rich, orange banners 



around the cone of 

 purple-brown disk-flow- 

 ers. The banners are 

 notched and bent down- 

 ward at their tips ; each 

 banner-flower has a pis- 

 til, and develops a seed. 

 The disk-flowers are 

 arranged in a conical, 

 button-like center; the 

 corollas are pink-purple 

 at the base of the tube, 

 but their five recurved, 

 pointed lobes are pur- 

 ple-brown. The anther- 

 tube is purple-brown 

 and the stigmas show 

 the same color; but 

 the pollen is brilliant 

 orange, and adds much 

 to the beauty of the 

 rich, dark florets when 

 it is pushed from the 

 anther-tubes. There is 

 no pappus developed, 

 and the seeds are car- 

 ried as are the seeds of 

 the white daisy, by be- 

 ing harvested with the 

 seeds of grain. 



The stem is strong 

 and erect; the bracts 

 of the involucre, or 

 "shingles", are long, 

 narrow and hairy, the lower ones being longer and wider than those 

 above; they all spread out flat, or recurve below the open flower-head. 

 In blossoming, first the ray-flowers spread wide 

 their banners; then the flowerets around the base 

 of the cone open and push out their yellow pollen 

 through the brown tubes; then day by day the 

 blossoming circle climbs toward the apex — a beau- 

 tiful way of blossoming upward. 



LESSON CXXXIX 

 The Black-Eyed Susan 

 Leading iJwitght — This flower should be studied 

 by the outline given in Lesson CXXXV. 



Disk-flower and ray- 

 flower. 



