636 



Handbook of Nature-Study 



THE BACHELOR'S BUTTON 



Teacher's Story 

 This beautiful garden flower gives 

 a variation in form from other com- 

 posites when studied according to 

 Lesson CXXXV. This valued garden 

 flower came to us from Europe and it 

 sometimes escapes cultivation and 

 runs wild in a gentle way. We call 

 it bachelor's button; but in Europe 

 it is called the cornflower, and tmder 

 this name it found its way into litera- 

 ture. None of the flowers that live 

 in families repays close study better 

 than does the bachelor's button. 

 The ray-flowers are tubular but they 

 do not have banners. Their tubes 

 flare open like trumpets, and they are 

 indeed color trumpets heralding to 

 the insect world that there is nectar 

 for the probing and pollen for ex- 

 change. Looked at from above, the 

 ray-flowers do not seem tubular; 

 from the sides, they show as uneven- 

 mouthed trumpets with lobed edges; 

 but though we search each trumpet 

 to its slender depths we can find no 

 pistils. These ray-flowers have no 

 duty in the way of maturing seeds. 

 In some varieties the ray-flowers are 

 white, and in others they are blue 

 and purple. They vary in number 

 from 7 to 14, or more. 



The disk-flowers have a long 

 corolla-tube, which is white and 

 delicately lobed and is enlarged 

 toward the upper end to a purple 

 bulb with five, long, slender lobes. 

 The anther-tube is purplish black, 

 and is bent into almost a hook, the 

 tip opening toward the m.iddle 

 of the flower-head. The 

 pollen is glistening white tinged with yellow, and 

 looks very pretty as it bursts out from the dark tubes. 

 The purple stigma first appears with its tips close to- 

 gether, but with a pollen brush just below it; later it opens 

 into a short Y, The buds at the center of the flower are 

 bent hook-shaped over the center of the flower-head. The Stigma open 

 involucral bracts or "shingles" are very pretty, each one V"// hrush 

 ornamented with a scaly fringe; they form a long, elegantly 5^/0^' £„- 

 shaped base to the flower-head. After the flowers have gone larged. 



A bachelor' s button. Note the trum 

 shape of the ray-fiowers. 

 Photo by Cyrus Crosby. 



