Bring Children Back To Nature Flower By Flower

Bring children back to nature: flower by flower; bird by bird, tree hallow by tree hallow. Curious By Nature  will be explore wildflowers, birds, and many other unique natural wonders one by one.  Just as knowing the name of a person connects you to that person, a child who  knows the name of a wildflower or bird will appreciate its importance and want to preserve it. To begin this adventure,  I will follow Frederic William Stack's book, Wildflowers Every Child Should Know published by Doubleday, Page & Company in 1909. Stack organizes his book according to color. I would like to explore each species by season. So check back for the first amazing wildflower that every child will remember by its smell, if  not its other characteristics. That's right. It is one of earliest plants to appear in New England.  By January or February you should be able to find this  Skunk Cabbage popping up in a still very cold bog along the side of a country road.  I'll be back with my own photo and more interesting facts about this member of the lilly family. Join me for this new adventure, flower by flower, bird by bird.

Flower By Flower

Flower By Flower

Think about the names of wildflowers (even those we consider weeds) you have learned over the years.  How many would you guess you know? 10? 20?  Why are some so familiar, and others, visually recognizable, but name unknown.  The buttercup, for instance, has been put under millions of tiny chins to check for the victim’s love of butter. The daisy has had its petals pulled one by one only to break the heart of the person holding the lone petal that “loves me not.” For each of us, there is that memory that forever holds the name of the flower in our hearts. One puff on the dandelion –endears the child to its magic explosion.

But there are so many more that go nameless. One look at a botanical website listing the wildflowers for each state will make it painfully clear how many we are missing.

The best way to approach this for child or adult is to focus on one flower and learn all there is to know about it. Looking around, yellow dots the Connecticut roadsides this month. I plan on learning about each yellow wildflower, flower by flower. Won’t you join me?

Read More About It:

A Little Guide to Wild Flowers, by Charlotte Voake, April, 2007; Transworld Publishers.

 

A Simple Treasure

READ ALL ABOUT IT!

Dandelions: Stars In The Grass

Age 4-7

Dandelions (Early Nature Book)

Age 7-10

Did You Know?

The word dandelion comes from the French name "dents de lion". Look at the jagged edges of the leaf. Do they look like the "teeth of a lion"?

'MATTER OF FACT'

The dandelion is a member of the Aster family. Every  country boasts this species. What is the the myth behind its ubiquitousness?