Emil looked at the flower. It was pretty, but it was also interesting. "What do you think it’s for?" He asked Billy.
"Well," said Billy, "I know that people and dolls use flowers to decorate their homes and other places. They give flowers to someone they care about."
Then Billy thought for a bit. "Flowers must have another reason for being, though," he said. "I know that there were already flowers when dinosaurs were around, and that was before people and before there were any dolls."
"There are some flowers people don't bring into the house," Emil pointed out, "like the flowers on that tree."
"Some flowers just make the garden pretty," Billy agreed, "but I don't know what they're really for."
Both boys thought about that. Then they looked at each other. "Let's ask Mandy!" they both said at once.
Mandy was having a peaceful morning knitting a dress for Charlotte. She could always tell when the other dolls had a question about science, and she looked up when the two boys came into the room.
"Mandy," Billy began, "we were looking at the plants outside and noticed that a lot of them have flowers right now."
"Yes," Emil said, "and we were wondering what the flowers are for, other than to look pretty for us."
Mandy put down her knitting. "You're right to think flowers have a purpose," she agreed, moving her glasses to the top of her head. "It's how many plants make more of themselves. It will be easier to explain if we look at a real flower," she added.
Mandy and the boys went back outside to look at the flowers.
Mandy looked closely at one of the flowers. "If we look at the inside of this flower, we can see there are things sticking up," Mandy pointed out. "This taller thing in the middle is called the pistil (PISS-tul)."
"Like a gun?" Billy asked. He thought a pistol was a kind of gun.
"Well," Mandy replied, "it sounds the same, but it's spelled differently." Then she moved her finger to another part of the flower. "This other kind of thing sticking up is called a stamen (STAY-men). You see there are several of these all around the pistil. In this flower, they aren't as tall. In some flowers, you can hardly see them."
The boys looked where Mandy was pointing.
"The stamen makes something called pollen (PAW-len)," Mandy explained. "That's a sort of powder that's made up of very tiny things, too small to see without a microscope."
"I remember what a microscope is," Billy said. "It helps us see something that's very small."
"That's right, Billy," Mandy agreed. "The pollen needs to get to the pistil in the same flower or a different flower of the same kind. Then the flower will make seeds, and the seeds can make new plants when they fall to the ground or get carried away and dropped somewhere else."
"How does the pollen get to the pistil," Emil asked. "A powder doesn't have legs."
"You're right," Mandy agreed. "That's why flowers are pretty."
The boys looked at each other in surprise.
"The petals on the flowers are bright colors," Mandy went on. "The colors let insects, like bees, and other creatures, like hummingbirds, know they are there. They come to visit the flower to eat the pollen or to drink a sweet drink the flowers make to reward them for coming. That's why hummingbird feeders are red or red and yellow."
"It sounds like the flowers are throwing a party," Emil said.
"In a way," Mandy agreed, "they are, but it's more like having a friend over, because they usually have only one visitor at a time."
"How does that get the pollen to the pistel," Billy wanted to know.
"That's how the pollen gets its legs," Mandy explained. "Let's say a butterfly or a bee or some other insect comes to visit the flower. The bee walks around in the flower, collecting nectar to take back to the hive."
"The bee gets pollen from this flower all over her body," Mandy went on. "She also leaves some pollen behind from any other flowers she has visited. When she visits another flower, some of the pollen from that flower gets left behind. Often it ends up on the sticky tip of the pistil. When that happens, the flower can make seeds."
"Like the seeds of a dandelion?" Emil asked.
"I've seen dandelions in the yard," Emil went on. "They are all yellow, but then one day the yellow petals are gone, and they are full of little white parachutes that can fly away when you blow on them."
"Yes," Mandy agreed. "That's one way flowers spread their seeds, but many flowers put their seeds in a pod."
"You mean, like apples?" Emil asked.
"Yes," Mandy agreed. "Sometimes you can eat the seed with the fruit, but with some fruit, like apples, you take the seeds out or eat all but the part with seeds."
"People throw away the part with the seeds," Mandy continued. "If it landed on the ground, it might grow into an apple tree, but we don't throw apple cores on the ground. We put them in the trash. There are people who grow apple trees for others to buy."
"What about the fruit that has seeds you can eat?" Emil asked.
"That's a different way seeds can spread," Mandy said. "Animals that eat fruit with the seeds leave their droppings out in the wild, and the seeds can sprout there."
Talking about fruit made Billy hungry. "Let's go have some fruit right now," he suggested.
So they did. The three dolls went into the house and pretended to eat some blueberries. They were good. They were yummy seed pods! They pretended to eat the fruit, seeds and all.
Cast--
Mandy: Götz Happy Kidz Katie 2015
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London
Emil: Götz Happy Kidz Emilia
Note: No dolls were harmed during production of this blog. All dolls shown are Götz Happy Kidz or Classic Kidz. If you like these stories and are willing, please make a donation of any amount to a charity that supports pediatric cancer, such as CURE Childhood Cancer, St. Baldrick's Foundation or St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
"The Doll's Storybook" is not affiliated with Gotz Dolls USA Inc. or Götz Puppenmanufaktur International GmbH.
Watch for the next story each Friday afternoon at 2:00 PM Pacific Time.
Like our Facebook page: The Doll's Storybook
<a href="https://www.bloglovin.com/blog/19832501/?claim=j3fj3mbb8kt">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>
Copyright © 2020 by Peggy Stuart
No comments:
Post a Comment