Show Out of Doors in the West Sketches of Natural History in the Rocky Mountain Plateau Edited by J. H. Professor of Nature Study In the University of The Sunflower King The The sunflower is named from the Greek the It is appropriately because the large heads face the sun until they become too on opposite sides of the to continue to do or until the stem hardens and refuses to turn as the sun moves on The flaming yellow rays and the brown center bear a certain resemblance to the rising sun on wet i warm appeal of their rich and splendid but our fall would lose something of its glory were our hillsides and lanes to be shorn of these massive and far-reaching fields of rich green and brown and Invites Its Nature has been kind to present us with such numbers of these fine and right hard she must strive to keep up the abundant supply of For jj THE SUNFLOWER Drawn from Nature by Pupils of the State Normal Training School and cloudy days in moist and the hillsides are wont to gleam with the golden glow of thousands of these flashing heads fall in all of yellow rays every parts of the Visitors often declare these splendid yellow flowers to be the most gorgeous of nature's floral displays in the and an English writer opinion that nature was of the herself in the radiant had perfected crowns of the are so common plants These great that we overlook the with us if you will notice the yellow rays of the you may discover that they are imperfect as flowers and that their use is simply to attract the friends of this plant those insects that are useful to it in carrying the grains of pollen from one flower head to Now the insects that perform this useful service are those with fuzzy or hairy to which the pollen dust can such as the the larger flies and and These are good pollen but they cannot eat the while the smooth-bodied insects that devour the seeds and leaves the most of the land and many of the caterpillars are doubly because they devour the plant and because they perform for it no useful The sunflower seems to know how to invite and entertain its whose presence serves its purpose so for it flings out those innumerable streamers at the edge of its flower and it bears the flowers at the top of stems so tall that they cannot be overlooked by the winged These unfurled banners are seen by the like a fine advertisement that tells of a they inform the bee of the feast of nectar and pollen awaiting it The Bees The bee hastens to accept the as do also the moth and the allured not alone by the sense of but also by that of For the balsamic odor of the sunflower would no doubt suffice to draw to it the night-flying which depend largely upon as well as the day-flying bees and which have well developed Many insects' can though they have no their or serving this purpose for and they locate the flower by its the sunflower blossom not but many a composite head of little flowers all massed Each tiny flower is so small that if nature had left it it would not have made a big enough show to attract its So hundreds of them are placed and the outer ones are turned into shining so that they look like one big flower and make a great What a fine thing co-operation these little flowers must have perished from lack of attention on the part of United they command the attention and presence of those visitors desired at needed by the The Flower Not all of the little flowers in the center ripen at one some have honey and others have the two-branched style just in condition to receive the pollen carried by the bee from other Pull off the little brown tip that rises out of any small tube flower of the central and you will see the two-forked It was encased by the the tips of which the were united in a ring around the style and its two-forked Look at one of the small it is a tube with a five-notched border five It goes down a short distance and then widens into a ring then it is narrower again down to the From the top of the seed two thin scales these are all that is left of the such when are called the Then the broad at the tapers to a point and fits into a small cavity in the platform on it The The seed is small and dry at with a close-fitting and is in this whole an From its base arises a papery purplish at the which at length forms the prickly chaff that discourages the cattle from eating up all of the sunflower The seed is and is fine for but the chaff is prickly and so that the cow doesn't eat many of the The bitter gum in the flower heads causes the cows to cough and spit and splutter when they eat a few of And even the birds will not take the green for these are hidden in the flower substance and the tiny and are sticky with gum till the heads are dry in the fall and and then the goldfinch perches on the rigid stalks and eats the sweet seeds by the very It would not be so even for the little to perch upon the nodding heads while the stems are flexible during the growing but when the stems dry and the little birds have a firm from which you can often watch shell out and devour this wholesome Insect Foes Shut The large red ants likewise secure the dry seeds and store away the harvest in their underground But the ants cannot get at the seeds during the growing for the sticky oozing out at intervals along the sunflower baffles little who detest anything and shun the proximity of any gum into which they have ever thrust their hooked Sometimes ants are entrapped in this gum and cannot extricate Many of the ground beetles also would doubtless enjoy the starchy seeds' and the golden pollen luscious with but they are similarly discouraged from climbing the As to the soft-bodied any of which would simply revel in the feast of the juicy seeds of the the soft little corollas and the rich pollen they are all kept away by an elaborate system of fortifications defend the sunflower from being destroyed by their boundless' Their depredations would speedily make an end of all this juicy and palatable food to be found the head of the had not the plant contrived to send out upon its stems and leaves innumerable little bristly hairs and rough which would serve to annoy and wound the larvae that attempt to make the long And at the when the heads are the larvae bumps up against the cup of overlapping leaves that contain and protect from below the hundreds of little flowers in each This a green made up three rows of little green leaves that form what is called the It is a platform shingled underneath with shield-shaped leafy scales that are each armed with a row of stiff bristles and a spear-like This wall of defense is what finally thwarts the caterpillar from crawling into the flower the long rays to the caterpillar's look like another extension of the horizontal along which the insect must back in order to reach the sweets And so the or platform that holds the finally saves them also from the crawling pests that come up from The Midges The sunflower cannot keep out all the harmful for you split open the flower you will discover numer ous very small insects running about These feed on the pollen and on the little on the drop of honey dew in the bottom of each of the little flower But even these are not permitted to become too the humming like the by the gorgeous flower heads and strong scent of the thrust their bills down between the flowers and clean out the little which are their favorite Name and And thanks to many elaborate the glorious old sunflower is and covers our hillsides and fields in autumn with a golden radiance till some places resemble oriental carpets and blazing flower What a fine object it is to draw yellow and brown and green and gold Its enormous triangular rough as the carpenter's and as large as big dogs' its huge strong stems and brown chaff in the all give it a color and character that any painter would like to study and any child would draw with And what an expressive name it Its family name i's the Greek for flower of the the Latin term for is its given signifying that it is an living only a its last means belonging to the west as you the place where the sun sets' is the while the place where the sun is the Helianthus variety is the full and appropriate name of this great wild so useful to the birds and so beautiful to human It is the king of the order the composite or compound flower of the early and its well shown in the is a study in unique Summary for we note that there are two kinds of flowers in the head ray and Ray flowers are the outer showy yellow straps disc the inner small tubular five showing five petals through which the two branched style protrudes with the five stamens clinging to it just below the divided the two chaffy bracts that sent the the chaffy cle which holds the and unique shape of the whole flower and Make Us a magnifying Show hoj the flowers get flying insects' visit tS attracts disc flowers are with stamens and the ray ers lacking Of what use are they to the To the To insects are of use to the that fly and eat only pot len and service they carry from one plant to another insects are enemies to eating flowers and How does the sunflower attraS its How repel its enemies' rough sticky ne bristly the or rows of lea-m enclosing the flower Wh prevents cattle from eating tk Uses bird and bee used by Indians for in soS' countries made into a grown for vitality of seeds facing th m The Western Helianthus Heads the rays many and but sterile receptacle flattish the persistent chaff bracing the of two thin chaffy scales ol top of the and two or more little Coarse and stout hew with heads' solitary or in leaves often 6 to 12 inches H. is and more with leaves ill to 3 inches tapering into ja long and slender the bracts of the and seldom H. i's a plant growing in wet is 2 to 4 feet leaves 3 6 inches almost sometimes finely bracts scarcely scales H. 5 to 10 feet with dull pubescent leaves and slender is the extensively cultivated sweet used as like the but J slender and smooth and with opposite is The 2 to 4 feet leaves a foot long and and one-half inches i is a foot with heads as large as in the the small headed has leaves an inch many flower and is a foot in with rays of an inch the has leaves 2 to 5 inches rays an inch means the little sun- |