The Magic Window (May 24, 1954)

hi there i am almost a garden here on my desk today have not I just have one two three four five six different kinds of flowers know what we're going to be talking about big rocks you know if you look out the window or even go outside you look all around you you see all sorts of things growing whether they're trees or flowers in your garden or vegetables in the garden whether they're reads our grasp no matter where there's all those things I just mentioned our plans and most of them have some green on and don't they but did you know that all of these plants have flowers they really do have you ever seen the flower of a tree the power of an alma tree or the flower of an oak tree got to look very carefully sometimes for them but very early in the spring before the leads come out if you look for than you can find them and some of them art is pretty is these flowers that are on my desk here but they're flowers nonetheless and you know what flower is a very important part of a plant you know why and it's the flowers job to grow and not only be very pretty so well we think they're pretty and to afford entertainment for us by looking at them and smelling of them but it's the duty of the flower to grow nice big and produce seeds so that the next year the plaque can grow again and that's a very important job for this little flower to have you I have a flower here that you've all seen I'm sure it's yellow is a great big yellow head to know what kind of a flower this is it's a dandelion that's right so you know why of dandelion George do you know where a dandelion got its name will doesn't look much like a lion does it let's look right here at the leaf of a dandelion see how pointed and sharp looking the edges look they're really not sharp but see how jagged they are they go in and out it almost looks like the teeth of a lion don't you think so well that's what somebody thought a long time ago that this leaf looked like the teeth of a lion and so that's what they've called them ever since dandelion and something else it's very interesting about the standing I'm going to pull out one of the little pieces of it here I always felt it this much right here was to flower is that what you thought too we know we were both fooled because if you take a little part and pull it out right here this is one flower of a daily life just this little tiny piece right here it's not very big is it but it has all the parts of the flower needs has a pistol anthers and it makes its own seeds so there's one flower and if we counted all the flowers in this hand of the dandelion I don't even know whether or not we could count that far but there's one and if I pull out a handful there's about ten right there so here are ten little tiny flowers very tiny on tape now when the deadline first comes out there might be six or seven or eight sometimes nine or ten of these great big composit flowers to one plant and before they open up this is what they look like they're covered on the outside with the green sequels right here and they look all green but right on the tip we can see the yellow part and then pretty soon they open up and they get nice big just like this and did you know that every night the dandelion wraps up in this little green covering like this before it goes to sleep and then in the morning the green unfolds back and it looks like this again well maybe the dandelion will stay like this flower right here Oh two or three days and then it folds itself up in its little green covering and it looks like this for a while now instead of being yellow it turns white because it's getting ready to open up again let's rip this back and see what it looks like on the end it takes back some of the green covering here see what's in there all those little tiny flowers that were yellow that we talked about have now turned to fight and I'll keep going off and see if we can look at it oh there are two of them right there so two together are very very small aren't they this is what it looks like on the inside and these are the kind of dandelions that we pick when we're going to shoot them you have you ever taken a dandelion when it bought this age right here held it between your fingers snap it off just like that and it just flies all over and all you have left is the stem but then after a few days that opens up and all the fight inside turns into something like this see all these little things it opened up and they all stood right straight up on and all those little white ones that we just got to looking at and we call this an old man dandelion because he has a white head now instead of a yellow hen and it's lots and lots of fun to play with leave because if the day is the day is very windy the wind blows all of these little seeds off but if it isn't when you then we can take them up and we can blow on them and watch what happened you see the fly away now there's a little hole here in the side and we can blow and blow elbow and see how many blows it takes us to grow all this white head off over Danny mine but then each one of these little puffs here's one night here with the seed hanging on the end of it and it's just like a balloon as it's all the balloon on every see right here there's a little black sea right there here and then the wind takes this away and it drops it on the ground somewhere and it plants it all by itself and I'll bet that's one of the reasons why there are so many dandelions she's posed sometimes they get so thick that we have to go out and dig you up or also do harm to other flat clumping there go all we see I hope you don't grow in here echo just flew and I think he wanted to look at the dandelion to see him fly away he comes in every once in a while just to see what we're doing we know some of these thieves now we can see the seeds on the Daniel 9 if we look at them very closely but here is a part of a flower now all the petals have fallen off of this flower the pedal just to be right around here like this and it was a big pretty yellow away but as it got older of course all the petals opened up and then they fell off and so I just cut this part and brought it in today and down in here are where all the new seeds are so I thought it might be kind of fun to cut one of these open and see if we could see these little tiny baby seat should we do that all right I'm going to slice up part of this right there and then perhaps if we look very very closely we can see that there are over just lots and lots of little tiny seeds all around me and if I take my knife and pick at them I can lift a couple of them up and I'll put them right down here on the stark paper there are two of them but only inside by here where all these little seeds are kept there are just probably hundreds of them and then as if I would have let this flower grow out in the garden as it got older these seeds would have gotten just a little bit bigger and they're also wet now if I run my finger across your rights and gets wet but then it as it get older they would have dried out and then after a while this whole outside piece would have broken open all by itself and that's how the little seeds would get out of there on this opens up and they just fall out well now the damn divine seeds were carried away by the wind and the seeds of this flower here opened up and the seeds popped out all by themselves and sometimes the birds carry the seeds and sometimes I know in the fall time if you've taken a hike in the woods or maybe even in the vacant lot by your house you come in and all over your shoes and on your shoe strings and on your socks you had these sticker birds that are very very quickly aren't they we know those are the seeds of weeds and they catch a ride on us and so that we're really the ones that that carry those seeds around we carry them around on our shoelaces and perhaps so drop drop off somewhere else and then they replat themselves there and the next year they'll probably be a sticker bush there so you want to be careful when you walk through let's look and see what other kind of flowers we have here now here's one that i always think are so much fun to look at because if you pretend just a little bit when you're looking at penn they almost look like people of course it does take a little bit extra pretending but we can pretend that the center of the pansy right there is a nose and here is an eye and there is an eye and there's the mouse down there pansy has nice big flat pedals on it because right down here what we just call the dough's of this little person's face is where the nectar on this flower is Captain it's kind of like honey you know and the bees like this nectar and so when a bumblebee or honey becomes it can sit right here on this nice broadly and just right down in there and get all that nectar sometimes if you find the pansy or if you know someone that have panties growing ask them whether or not they will give you one you don't want to pick them without asking for that no but then spread it open like this and write down there in that part that we call the nose you look sometime and you'll see a little man sitting in there and this little man has a green hat on and a little brown scarf around his neck and you just look for that little man sometime and see whether or not you can find him here's another panty that looks just a little bit different but they're both very pretty aren't they and they both look like they might just but then we have some other flowers over here and here's one that I that I want to show you I'll have to take it out of my face and this is a flower that we can have a lot of fun with to do you know what kind of a flower that is it's a pink one by the way that's called a Snapdragon and there are a lot of separate flowers on this blue and I'm going to break one off right here and show it to you and maybe then you'll understand why it's called a Snapdragon watch when I pinch the corners right here wat to what happens look like this one is going to snap let's try another one to see whether it will snap yep there see what happens the flower opens up and we can see right inside it like that we can see all the parts right in this little flower and pinch the sides snaps and snaps and snap and that's how we call a snap dragons we can have a lot of fun pretending that these are real animals and they walk up and they go snap snap snap and here it's a plant this is a marigold and we can see a lot of different things about this plant we can't see the seed but we know that sense it in a pot here that the seeds started down here in the dirt but look what's down here on the bottom can you see this little rook thats hanging out right here there is one there all the lips are down underneath the ground now and that's where the plant gets its water through the roof and here's one that's come right out to a little hole in the bottom of the pot and then the stem has come up out of the ground and leaves have come out and here is the flower of numerical isn't it pretty it's bright yellow with very dark red market in the very center of it there are other flowers to that don't growth particularly well in our gardens and this is one of these flowers this is a carnation and I'm going to put it in this class of ink right here and then tomorrow I'm going to see whether or not this carnation has changed color it just might do that you know because it gets its food to the stem and if the ink goes up through the stem perhaps it will come out into the leaves to suppose it will well I'm going to put it in this class of ink and I'm going to leave it there all night tonight and then I'm going to see tomorrow whether or not the carnation changed color my hope that that you've learned some things looking at the flowers you talking about today and I hope you really enjoy talking about