Stop To Smell The Gardenias

The Gardenia bush next to the house is in full bloom.  The scent is intoxicating as we walk out onto the porch.  So when Barb created a new outdoor challenge newsletter and we were challenged to learn about a flower from our garden I knew which one I would choose.

The boys were smelling the flowers and they thought they smelled like honeysuckles.

Boo was smelling some of the pollen.  The boys rubbed some of the pollen on their faces.  They thought the Indians must have used pollen to make yellow face paint.

The boys chose one of the newer blooms to draw in their nature notebooks.

We used the idea in the newsletter to paint a beautiful water color frame for our Gardenia drawing.  Since the Gardenia was white we painted the inside of the circles so that our white pencil would show up nicely.

We drew  the Gardenia and labeled some parts of the flower...

corolla

anther 

pollen

petal

 We discussed why the pollen is important to the flower.  The boys were also reminded that the chief reason for a flower is to make seed.

The finished products were beautiful...