[Umbrian]

Yesterday I did a long walk with an Italian friend in the hills above us. We were planning a "treasure hunt" that is to be part of a family day organised by a local church. Families will meet in our local village and after visiting places of interest there will walk over the hills to another village where, after a picnic lunch they will play games (if they have any energy left!). To make the walk more fun for the children they asked me if I would make the walk a treasure hunt and so I was going over the route and hanging various small items on the bushes lining the paths. The variety of wild flowers we saw was amazing and also I was struck by the variety of beautiful flowering grasses. I decided to try to draw attention to the flowers since here there is no great interest in wild flowers, any multipetalled flowers are daises for example. Not wanting to be presented with orchids or other rarer flowers I decided to ask for as many different yellow flowers that they could find. There seems to be a great number of  these at this time of the year, the taking of a few that could not be construed as damaging. I also thought to ask for as many different flowering grasses  they spotted but amazingly my Italian friend thought they would not understand what they were! At the end of the walk when I am adding up the various items the children have found I shall take the opportunity to talk about the flowers and hopefully kindle some interest .  I shall also try to remember to take my camera so that I can photograph some of the grasses, something I know very little about.

[David Bracey]

You could challenge the children and ask them why so many flowers are yellow. If grasses are pollinated why do they not have yellow flowers etc etc!??

[Alice]

What a good idea.
And wouldn't it be wonderful if you could teach them the scientific names!

[David Bracey]

No.  Teach them to be curious. Latin names can come later when you,ve caught them.  Of course its relatively easy to learn L names when youngish, but not now!

[Umbrian]

OK David fill me in so that I impart the proper information, I am not very scientifically minded but seem to remember reading on the forum? something about yellow flowers attracting more pollinating insects.......
As for naming the the flowers that presents a real headache since there are not many "Italian" names for them as is the case in England eg "Bird's Foot Trefoil"  for Lotus corniculatus that, if I remember we also called, rightly or wrongly as children "Eggs and Bacon"! I think they will be too tired for a real "lesson" but who knows I might kindle a bit of interest and that will be more than worth it.

[David Bracey]

Umbrian, yellow is a common flower colour in the spring simply because it is so successful at attracting pollinating insects. Pure Darwinism......survival of the fitest.

If there are no Italian names then i suppose you will have to useLatin names. You could also press the flowers to identify later. Take a hand lens.

Actually when I said "not now" Ii was referring to my current memory. 

[Umbrian]

Just to report that the family day walk with treasure hunt that included looking for different yellow wild flowers went well. It was a blistering hot day and I wondered if some of the younger ones would survive but happily they did and presented me with bags of "treasure" and very sad looking wild flowers as you can imagine.  Due to the heat, the exhaustion of the participants and the state of the flowers I decided it was not a suitable time to try to educate them further but they obviously enjoyed the challenge and hopefully I can do this at a later date. Whilst we were waiting for everybody to arrive at the start of the walk, two little girls, 9 and 10 years old were talking to me and had already found one or two flowers to show me. One was Anthemis tinctoria for which she knew the "Italian" name which surprised me somewhat and so perhaps I shall learn a lot too if we can get together again.

[JTh]

Excellent project you have started, Carole, a good example for all of us.