S76 



Handbook of Nature-Siudy 



THE PEARLY EVERLASTING 



Teacher's Story 



These wraithlike flowers seem never to have been alive, rather than to 

 have been endowed with everlasting life. The cattle share this opinion 

 and would no sooner eat these plants than if they were made of cotton 

 batting. The stems are covered with white felt; tHe long narrow leaves 



are very pale green, and 

 when examined with a 

 lens, look as if they 

 were covered with a 

 layer of cotton which 

 disguises all venation 

 except the thick mid- 

 rib. The leaves are set 

 alternate, and become 

 shorter and narrower 

 and whiter toward the 

 top of the plant, where 

 they are obliged to give 

 their sustenance to the 

 flower stems borne in 

 their axils. All this 

 cottony covering has 

 its uses to prevent the 

 evaporation of water 

 from the plant during 

 the long droughts. The 

 everlasting never has 

 much juice in its leaves 

 but what it has, it 

 keeps. 



The flower stems are 

 rather stout, woolly, 

 soft and pliable. They 

 come off at the axils of 

 the threadlike whitish 

 leaves. The pistillate 

 and the staminate flow- 

 ers are borne on separ- 

 ate plants, and usually 

 in separate patches. 

 The pistillate, or seed- 

 developing, plants have 

 globular I flowerl buds, 

 almost egg-shaped, with 

 a fluffy lemon-yellow 

 knob at the tip; this 

 fluff is made up of stig- 

 mas split at the end. 

 At the center of this tassel of lemon-yellow stigma-plush, may often be 

 seen a depression; at the bottom of this well, there are three or four 



The pistillate flower-heads of the pearly everlasting. 

 Photo by Verne Morton, 



