Inside of sunflowers...

The sunflowers we have been drawing and painting from observation are wilting... 

Honeypie wanted to know if there were sunflower seeds inside...  

Inspired by "ordinary life magic" 's blog entry for april 9th in which she and her bunch dissected a tulip... we investigated our sunflowers today.

   

We made a cross section and discovered that the outside petals of the sunflower are called the "ray flowers"  (they look like the rays of the sun!) and the tiny flowers inside the sunflower are called the "disk flowers" because they are inside the circle part of the sunflower (looks like a disk!)!  also the part on the top of the stem that holds the flower together is called a "receptacle".

Honeypie discovered that...

1.the disc flowers look like baby squids and are small

2.the ray flowers are soft and are big

3.the inside of the  "receptacle" is spongy and mushy...

4.the stem is hollow 

5.... the water in the vase is starting to smell...why???

I am so inspired by "ordinary life magic" 's blog.  She is amazing in her involvement with nature.... a little hard for me this season since this weather has been so cold... but i think i am making excuses... 

Goal for this spring???  full nature immersion!... 

and next winter i will get a warmer coat!

PS... no sunflower seeds in our these sunflowers... we were disappointed! ... we learned that once one of the little flowers in the disk is pollinated, it can grow a seed... so does that mean that our sunflower was not pollinated?  we are a bit confused... more research is needed...

almost forgot the book we read!!!

"From seed to sunflower" by Gerald Legg.  It touches on germination, flower identification, pollination... but not enough to answer our question.  

Off to the library...