Category: Botany (Page 8 of 10)

Butterfly Gardening With Children: The Basics

The butterfly is a flying flower,
The flower a tethered butterfly.
~Ponce Denis Écouchard Lebrun

swallowtail-on-flower

Butterflies are colorful, interesting insects and many children find them fascinating.

Tips for Starting Your Own Butterfly Garden

What do butterflies need to survive? Food, water and shelter are all important. Let’s find out how to provide butterflies with the necessities.

1. Adult Butterfly Nectar Plants

An easy way to get started with butterfly gardening is to provide some flowering plants to provide nectar for adult butterflies. These plants may be in your yard or even in pots on your patio.

Choosing plants can be a bit daunting at first. Try taking a walk around some local gardens and note which plants butterflies are visiting. Check with local butterfly societies and plant nurseries for suggestions, as well. Ideally you want to have a range of plants that bloom over the entire growing season.

Native versus non-native plants

When you are just starting out, you may just want to try planting some old favorites, like zinnias or cosmos. Butterfly experts recommend, however, that you also include some native or local plants. For example, given a choice between:

real-butterfly-weed-dcThe butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) which is native to eastern North America, or…

tropical-butterfly-milkweed-flowers-orange

the the exotic tropical or blood milkweed, Asclepias curassavica, the butterfly milkweed is a safer bet. If you are an experienced butterfly gardener, you might want to check this .pdf article about the recent controversy about the tropical milkweed and the monarch butterfly.

Some butterfly favorite plants are:

  • milkweeds (monarchs, queens)
  • lantana
  • butterfly bush
  • ageratum (attracts male queen butterflies)
  • dill, fennel or parsley (swallowtails)
  • hollyhocks (painted lady)
  • passion flower (fritillaries)

2. Caterpillar host plants

If you are interested in raising butterflies and seeing the life stages, then it is important to provide the plants that caterpillars use for food. Caterpillars often have specific and limited feeding preferences. Look for information about your local butterflies and their hosts at websites like Butterflies and Moths of North America (click on the “regional checklists” tab).

black-swallowtail-larva-Papilio polyxenes-22

Dill and fennel are eaten by certain swallowtail caterpillars. Butterfly gardeners always plant some extra for the butterflies.

3. Water

Even though many butterflies drink nectar, some also drink water or obtain nutrients from wet spots in the garden. Providing a damp bare spot or patch of moist sand is likely to be enough.

nice-swallowtail-puddling

4. Shelter

Butterflies need places to stow away at night, and to shelter from wind and rain during the day. Providing leafy shrubs and trees, plus not being excessively tidy are great ways to ensure butterflies have safe places to hide.

This video from University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension has some good ideas.



Other suggestions:

No two butterfly gardens will be alike. They will vary according to region, size and the individual taste of the gardeners. Make butterfly gardening a family project and don’t be afraid to let your creativity run wild.

Consider recording your observations via a nature journal, photographs and sound recordings. You might even want to keep a blog or share on Instagram or Flickr to inspire other butterfly gardeners. The possibilities are endless!

Do you have a butterfly garden? Have you gardened with children? What tips would you share? Have you encountered any problems? What suggestions do you have to avoid them?

Be sure to check our Butterfly Gardening With Children links page for more activities throughout the week.

butterfly-gardening-with-children

 

Zinnias: Flower Cycles and Parts

If you have been following Growing With Science, you know that we have been closely observing the insects on a small planting of zinnias for the last few weeks (posts about zinnia insects 1, 2, and 3).

mix-of-zinnias-87

The variety of zinnias we have been observing are Profusion® Fire, which are hybrids between regular zinnias (Zinnia elegans), and the Mexican or narrowleaf zinnias (Zinnia angustifolia).

While initially observing the insects on the plants, we also noticed something about the plants themselves, specifically the flowers. Do you notice anything about the flowers in the photograph above?

As it turns out, the flowers change as they become older.

tightly-closed-zinnia-bud-63The zinnia flower head starts out as a tightly closed bud.

young-red-zinnia-flower-19

When the flower head first opens, it is deep, bright orange, almost scarlet.

medium-orange-zinnia-22

As the flower head matures, it becomes a medium orange. Do you see any other changes?

old-yellowed-zinnia-11

The oldest flower heads have faded to almost yellow. They look a bit worse for wear.

There have been some changes to the flowers within the flower head as well, but we need to learn some vocabulary before we can investigate it.

Flower Parts

 

Mature_flower_diagram.svg

(“Mature flower diagram” by Mariana Ruiz LadyofHats. Public Domain image at Wikimedia Commons.)

You may have seen a diagram like this one describing the various parts of a hypothetical flower. Basically, the ovary, style and stigma form the female part of the flower that receives the pollen. The stamens, made up of filaments and anthers, are the male parts of the flower that produce pollen.

Very few flowers actually conform to this simple diagram, and the zinnias are certainly much more complex. Rather than a single flower, what we see is actually a cluster of minute flowers called disk and ray florets.

 

young-floret-parts

You may have to scroll back up to the bigger photographs above to see the parts clearly, but in the young flower head the ray florets around the outside are flowering, which is evident by the yellow stigmas. Only a few disk florets in the center have begun to open.

 

medium-floret-parts

In the middle-aged flower head, most of the ray florets have finished flowering and many of the disk florets around the outside have begun to flower.

older-floret-parts

In the older flower heads, the outer florets have finished flowering and are developing the all-important seeds. Only the disk florets at the very center are still flowering.

Flower Part Dissection Activity for Children

Note: check whether the children have severe pollen allergies before starting this activity.

Gather:

  • Living flowers of different types (see flower notes)
  • Safety scissors and other dissecting equipment (age appropriate)
  • Diagrams/illustrations of flower part with labels
  • Dissecting microscope (optional)
  • Paper (optional)
  • Pens or markers (optional)
  • Tape (optional)

Flower notes:  Tiger lilies or other lilies are excellent examples of simple flowers as seen in the diagram. Daisies and sunflowers are good examples of the complex flowers. Working with a large group? You might want to ask your local grocery store or florist if they would be willing to donate flowers that have passed their freshness date. Keep the flowers alive in a vase of water.

Have the children observe the different types of flowers closely. Provide diagrams or illustrations naming the flower parts. Once everyone has had a chance to observe the flowers, allow the children to dissect the flowers to examine the parts more fully. Very young children can simply pull them apart. Older children might use safety scissors. Still older children can use dissecting pins and a dissecting microscope, if available.

Remove the petals or pull off the ray florets. Can you find the stigma? What about the stamens? Is the stamen releasing pollen? What color is the pollen? What is inside a disk floret?

Older children might want to spread the parts onto a piece of paper or card stock and tape them down. Label the parts.

Extension:  If the flower parts aren’t damaged too badly, allow the children resemble the parts to make their own mix of “Franken-flowers.”

Resources:
The Clover & the Bee; A Book of Pollination by Anne Ophelia Dowden

This image does not do this beautiful book justice. It includes many highly-detailed, scientifically-accurate diagrams of different types of flowers with their parts labelled. It also discusses pollinators and how they use differently-shaped flowers in different ways. Super scientific reference for educators and older children.

Age Range: 10 and up
Hardcover: 90 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins; 1st edition (May 1, 1990)
ISBN-10: 0690046774
ISBN-13: 978-0690046779

This is an older book by the same author which covers similar material.

Publisher: Ty Crowell Co (June 1963)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0690506562
ISBN-13: 978-0690506563

 

Disclosure:  I am an affiliate for Amazon. If you click through the linked titles or ads and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission at no extra charge to you. Proceeds will be used to maintain this self-hosted blog.

Seed of the Week: Sweet Pea

Our mystery seeds from last week were from the sweet pea, Lathyrus odoratus.

colorful-sweet-peas

The sweet pea is a vining annual plant. Originally from Southern Italy, the wild plant has been transformed into numerous showy cultivars now grown throughout the world.

close-up-sweet-pea

As the species name “odoratus” might imply, the flowers are quite fragrant.

pink-sweet-peasAlthough the flowers of the plant resemble those of the garden pea…

mystery-seeds-241-1

and the seeds resemble peas, the sweet pea is simply an ornamental and is not edible.

sweet-pea-flowers-april-1

The nectar of the flowers, however, is used by hummingbirds, butterflies and bigger bees, such as bumble and carpenter bees.

sweet pea flower close up

Activity:

Encourage children to look closely at the flower structure of a sweet pea. Ask questions such as, “Do all the petals look alike?” (No, the upper petal is usually bigger and often more colorful). Do you see the same flower parts as a flat flower? (No, the main flower parts are enclosed by the petals). If possible, gently remove a flower and dissect it to look for the stamen, pistil, and possibly even the nectar glands.

Be sure to let us know what you find and if you have any questions.

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