Early Spring Flowers: A Homeschool Nature Study

This week's Nature Study Challenge was to study and learn about Early Spring Flowers. My son and I didn't have any trouble finding spring flowers to study! We have a Bradford Pear, a Japanese Cherry tree, crocuses, and several other blooming plants in our year right now.

We began our nature study by comparing the blossoms of the Bradford Pear, the Japanese Cherry tree, and an ornamental shrub. We observed the parts of the flower on each one, and also discovered that they all had five petals.

Bradford Pear Tree


Japanese Cherry Tree

I've forgotten the name of this one. I believe it's some sort of dwarf ornamental pear. Whatever it is, it's very pretty when it's blooming! Notice how it has both white and pink blossoms on the same plant.

You can see how the sepals help protect the bud!

We had quite a few bees flying from flower to flower in our yard. Luckily the bees were more interested in the flowers than they were in us, as my son had to get pretty close to the bees and stay there for quite some time as he waited for a bee to land on a flower long enough for him to snap a photo!

Next we explored some crocuses that were blooming in our yard.

We noticed that, unlike the previous flowers we'd studied that day, they did NOT have five petals. They have three petals and three sepals. The sepals are the outer "petals" which help protect the flower, especially while it's developing from a bud.

We observed that our crocuses have grasslike leaves, with a white stripe down the middle of each. In the Handbook of Nature Study, Anna Botsford Comstock explains that crocuses don't come from bulbs. They come from corms, which are thick underground stems. Bulbs have layers, like an onion, and corms do not. Roots grow down from the corm and shoots grow up from it. Each year, baby corms grow on top of the mother corms, causing the corms to be eventually be pushed out above the ground, and necessitating the need to replant them every few years. We're looking forward to planting some crocus corms in the fall, so we can see exactly what the corms look like! We did find a great image of a crocus plant, including the corm: Crocus Corm in Spring. We also found some nice images of crocuses in different stages of developing, including the corms: SRGC Bulb Log Diary



Here are some of the other flowers we found in our yard.

This is a very small flower that was growing in our grass. We noticed that, like the crocus, this one did NOT have 5 petals. It had four.

Our Candytuff didn't have 5 petals either! I found this to be a very interesting petal arrangement! The photo above was taken 4 days ago. When I looked today, the flowers had begun to fill out more.

Here's a side view of our Candytuff, taken on the same day as the photo above.

You can see the additional flowers that will soon be open. They will help make each flower cluster look more round.