It is rather a strange memory. It was my last year in high school and I was taking the A level botany exam. As part of the practical exam we had to identify a flower using the Flora. I don't know if they still have floras today but this was book in which you could trace the identity of a plant by identifying all the parts of the flower. Each identifying feature would take you to another page and more choices. Eventually you arrived at what you hoped was the correct ID. We were all rather fearful of what we would get, having just been presented the cross section of an elephants trunk and a dormouse in the previous Zoology practical exam.
The good news was there was a flower I immediately recognized at each place, the anemone. I still had to trace the id but at least I would know if I had done it correctly. I even remember my flower was purple.
The flower above is from a bag tubers I planted in pots in the fall. Not the prettiest of colors but still the first bloom to open and to once again trigger that 56 year old memory.
Here in Texas the first flowers of the New Year are almost always the native Texas anemones, Anemone berlandieri, more commonly called windflowers because they open on windy days. They usually arrive singly and are white or shades of pink and purple. This was the first time I had seen clump. Those would be perfect in my rock garden if only I could get them to clump.
 |
| Anemone berlandieri |
These flower will enjoy center stage for a few weeks. As the flowers fade the center cone grows upwards into a thimble shape until the fluffy seeds mature and are blown away on the wind.
Lovely! It's always fun to trace back memories of specific flowers and memories of our first interests in gardening and botany. Mine go back to girl scouting and hikes with my family. Canada Anemone is native and common around here--it's similar in appearance to your Texas Anemone. I really enjoy all of these.
ReplyDeleteI love anemones even if they don't love my environment. However, I'm glad that I never had to identify a flower by its parts in high school as I had very little exposure to flowers and gardening at that stage of my life and no doubt would have failed the test. Of course, my high school didn't even offer botany courses so perhaps that's the sadder fact.
ReplyDeleteI studied Botany all the way up to graduating in Zoology. But I never knew all the plants I had studied as part of my syllabus as there weren't any growing in hot and humid Calcutta. So while I could tell you all about orchids and their lady parts, I only ever saw orchids books and magazines. The internet has brought the world into most classrooms of the world today but I grew up with rote learning. My earliest flower memory is similar to yours, we dissected hibiscus flowers in Year 4 and drew the sepals, petals etc and labelled them in spidery capitals. I loved science lessons and especially the drawing part! Thanks for your lovely post.
ReplyDeleteThanks Ruma. I wonder if your classes were designed on the British system? We were streamed either arts or science after the 4th year so I took chemistry and physics and then in my final 2 years in HS chemistry, botany and zoology. Strangely I dropped botany after one year at uni and did psychology. Strange to think of that now.
DeleteMy high school didn't have botany, either, and as I'm squeamish when is comes to zoology, it took me years before I finally discovered my love for putting a plant under the microscope. If you'd like to dust off your keying skills, look for Shinner's and Mahler's Illustrated Flora of North Central Texas by Diggs, Lipscomb and O'Kennon. It's available from The Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT).
ReplyDeleteI was at school in England and majored in Zoology at university. Yes, I remember the endless dissections of smelly dogfish, and all other manner of creatures. I really loved dissection. A level practical was dissecting the cranial nerves of a dogfish. I should have been a surgeon! As to the keying skills I think I will leave the discoveries in the past but I will look up the book and see if it is similar to the one I remember. I did try checking before but didn't come up with anything.
DeleteWe taught students with that flora in plant taxonomy lab at UT Tyler, and my son used it when he was at school at Texas State, so you shouldn't have any trouble finding a copy to look at. My aversion to dissecting animals sent me into a Horticulture program, but I'm embarrassed to admit to that degree, as I'm not really much of a gardener. ha ha. I did end up working in a hospital lab for a few years, which required drawing blood every day. Somehow that didn't bother me. You never know where life will take you!
ReplyDeleteGreat story! And a lovely flower.
ReplyDeleteHow interesting to be able to take such classes in high school! The windflowers are lovely. I have strong memories of the flowers that grew in our yard when I was young and lived near Fairbanks, likely because we spent almost the entirety of those short months outside.
ReplyDelete