Kathy J. has been learning and teaching kids about nature for more than 20 years. She collects bugs, watches squirrels, does not get a rash from poison ivy, practices “snacker” behavior in winter, and is always on alert for interesting plants and animals. When she’s not watching something in the trees or spending time with her teenage daughters, she’s overseeing programs for teachers and students at the Garden.
When you walk through natural wooded areas like McDonald Woods, you may find this plant:
You can’t miss the orange flowers of this jewelweed, but look closer to find the seedpod hanging below and to the right of the third blossom.
Its scientific name is Impatiens capensis, and jewelweed has some interesting features that make it worth getting to know. Its common names, jewelweed and touch-me-not probably come from the characteristics of the flowers and seeds. The bright orange blossoms have a jewel-like quality and stand out against the green foliage.
The swollen seedpod on this plant looks ripe and ready to pop.
You might expect a plant called “touch-me-not” to be toxic or irritating to the skin. This is not the case. The name comes from a little seedpod surprise. When they are ripe, a slight disturbance will cause them to pop open and squirt their seeds out.
We have to assume that someone called it “touch-me-not” after touching a seedpod and having the seeds shoot at him. Maybe it seemed as if the plant was reacting negatively to his touch. Rather than a defense mechanism, shooting seeds is an effective dispersal strategy, as it sends the seeds away from the mother plant where they might have a better chance to sprout and grow.
Viewed from above, the characteristic oval leaf shape and a seedpod growing from the center stem are evident.
Finding jewelweed in the forest right now may be a little tricky because there aren’t many flowers remaining. Get to know the leaves—they are oval-shaped with a gently pointed tip, and have slightly toothed edges. The stem is thick and a translucent light green.
Jewelweed has some other interesting qualities. Native Americans squeezed the juice from the stem of jewelweed and applied it to poison ivy rashes and other skin ailments for a very soothing treatment. It is ironic that “touch-me-not” is a cure for “leaves of three—let it be,” don’t you think?
Folklore tells us that wherever you find a toxic plant, you will find its remedy growing nearby. It’s a nice idea, but it may not be true. That said, you will probably find poison ivy growing near jewelweed, so use caution and be careful not to touch when you are searching for this plant.
Looking for a fun and novel table decoration for a special event? Here’s an idea. We turned our table decorations into a game for the School Gardening Conference.
Oregano in its namesake jar was our Planter Puzzler example.
We paired unusual plant containers with plants that had some relationship to those planters and asked teachers to guess the connections. We provided an easy example to start. You can duplicate this game using our examples or invent your own combinations. Start with a plant that has a fun name that lends itself to ideas for containers based on the shape, color, or function of the container. You can also start with a container and then select a plant or seeds to match.
If you have one or the other and can’t think of good pairing, do an internet image search for related words. We had a gumball machine, so we tried “gum plant,” “ball plant,” and other ideas just to play around with the idea before we decided to fill it with sweet gum tree seeds. (Sorry, I did not get a good photo of it.)
I had a ceramic birdhouse, so I filled it with soil and planted birdseed (actually, millet and sunflower seeds).
It was easy to find the right container for this goldfish plant (Hypocyrta glabra)—a fish bowl!
A pitcher plant growing inside a beverage pitcher was a favorite table display. (This pitcher is a species of Nepenthes.)
Here are a few practical tips for doing this at home:
Since these containers were not made for plants, you may need to line them with a plastic bag or insert a plastic cup or pot. If you want to keep the plants in this container for any length of time, you’ll need to provide drainage or the roots will rot. Follow directions from Tim Pollack for planting a terrarium in this YouTube video.
You may have to alter the container to make it work. I had to take apart a toy drum to turn it into a planter for beets. (Beets in a drum—get it? If you want to impress, don’t shy away from puns, references to popular stories, or inside jokes.)
In addition to the ideas mentioned above, we also used these plant-container pairings:
chamomile in a Peter Rabbit teapot
radishes in a Peter Rabbit ceramic bowl
mint in a teacup
lettuce in a wooden salad bowl
chain of hearts in a valentine chocolate box
spider plant in a “Big Bugs” coffee mug
herbs in a recipe box
A heart-shaped chocolates tin from Valentine’s Day—the perfect home for a string of hearts plant (Ceropegia woodii)
We get a lot of questions about one particular plant in the Grunsfeld Children’s Growing Garden: Naranjilla (pronounced nahr-ahn-HEE-yah). It’s easy to see why.
You can find this naranjilla (Solanum quitoense) in Bed #10 in the Growing Garden.
This attractive plant has large, thick, green leaves, is about 10–12 inches long and 8–10 inches wide, with deeply serrated edges, and is completely covered in tiny, purple hairs (which are not really hairs—in the botanical world they are called “tricomes”). It is native to Ecuador and other South American countries.
There is more to notice about this intriguing plant than its gorgeous coloring, interesting texture, and striking presence. First, the naranjillas in this small garden bed, number 10, were put there for a reason. All but one of the plants in this bed are in the nightshade family, Solanaceae. This family includes tomato, eggplant, potato, and petunia. Naranjilla is cousin to these more familiar plants.
Upon closer inspection, it’s easy to see how these plants are related.
When you’re in the garden, take a look at the flowers on these plants. You will see the similarities that characterize plants in the nightshade family. Notice that they all have five petals that are fused so that they look like a funnel with five lobes. You’ll easily be able to pick out the one plant that does not belong in the family.
See how this ‘Pink Dreams Fuseable’ petunia (Petunia x hybrida ‘Pink Dreams Fuseable’) has five petals fused together, so it is like one continuous petal? You’ll find the same bloom design on tomato and other nightshade flowers.
The naranjilla won’t bloom until much later in the summer, and when it does you’ll recognize the similar flower shape. Naranjilla means “little orange” in Spanish, because the fruits are small, yellow, and spherical like little oranges. Unfortunately, our growing season in Chicago is not long enough for naranjilla plants to produce the sweet fruits, which are juiced for beverages in Ecuador.
Another interesting thing about the naranjilla—a detail that separates it from other members of the family—is that the leaves look soft and fuzzy, but they can grow sharp thorns along the veins. As you might expect, the thorns discourage large animals from eating the leaves. They are not as sharp and menacing as rose thorns, but you wouldn’t want to stroke a naranjilla leaf that bears thorns.
This naranjilla leaf, which is growing in a container on the Learning Center deck, is covered in thorns. There are no thorns on the plants in the Growing Garden. (The white things on this leaf are stamens fallen from the nearby “bunny tail” grass.)
Stop by the Growing Garden at the Learning Campus from noon to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends this summer to see our naranjilla plants and enjoy free family drop-in activities.
Please note: the Growing Garden is closed on weekday mornings while Camp CBG is in session.
Saving the planet can seem like a daunting task, and raising our children to join in the effort can feel overwhelming. Give children a focus. Rather than trying to solve all problems at once, families can do a world of good for the planet by concentrating on one thing at a time.
This summer, we suggest focusing on water. The availability of fresh, clean drinking water is a big problem in some places. In Chicago, we tend to forget this because we live near a plentiful supply—Lake Michigan. Just because we have this resource does not mean we can waste it!
Blue heron in flight
Think of ways your family can reduce the amount of water you use: don’t run water while brushing teeth, put a timer in the bathroom to limit showers to five minutes, or let the grass go dormant and not water it during a dry spell. Make it a family project to find ways to conserve this precious resource. This is all about training yourselves to be aware of waste and think of new ways to conserve.
You can engage your family in calculating the amount of water you conserve. Make a list of all the ways you are going to try to conserve water, and then keep track of how much water you save. For instance, if you use water only when you’re ready to rinse after brushing your teeth, credit yourselves with saving 15 cups of water each time anyone brushes teeth. At the end of the month, add up the total amount of water you saved and celebrate your achievement.
Will you see a significant difference or get any instant reward for your efforts? No, but you will develop a sensibility that translates to reducing waste in other parts of your life. If we all do this, the effect will be cumulative, but everyone has to contribute. This is how kids can play an essential part in making a difference.
Long-term learning is not a “lightbulb” moment.
Learning that you can make a difference may not be a “light-bulb-going-off” experience for most people, especially children. That may be why the idea that kids can make a difference might be considered a myth—but it’s only a myth to people who expect instant gratification and immediate rewards. More often, we discover our power to have a positive influence on the environment over a period of time.
Green Youth Farm participants.
One of our Chicago Botanic Garden programs, Green Youth Farm, teaches students to grow their own vegetables—another way a family could learn to make a difference. Growing your own food is not only healthy, it also cuts down on energy consumption and pollution caused by shipping produce from farm to market to home. Students in this program experience the satisfaction of seeing what happens when they work with the environment—the sun, soil, water, and air—to feed themselves and help their communities.
It takes months to plant and tend a garden before you get to taste the produce. Likewise, it takes time to see the benefits of positive changes we make and their results on the environment. We have seen children discover the impact they can have on their communities and homes most obviously in these kinds of programs. There is no instant payoff. Making change permanently takes patience, and commitment—and not just for one summer.
What can the Chicago Botanic Garden teach my children?
Learning about prairie ecosystems at the Garden.
We encourage children to discover wonderful things in nature. We help them understand why plants have flowers and how those flowers attract bees. We teach them what plants need to grow and how people need plants. Understanding these things helps children understand why we all need to take care of the environment, and how they are part of the environment, too. The wonderful feelings children get from experiencing gardens and nature help to instill a love of the natural world—an essential component of wanting to make a difference.
Join us for World Environment Day on June 1, a fun family event where kids and their parents can learn about water conservation and other critical environmental issues. Kids will get to help plant the Grunsfeld Children’s Growing Garden and learn a little about growing a garden. They will also discover the myriad of creatures that live in a healthy lake, and they’ll be challenged to think about water conservation to protect these delicate habitats.
Studying lake ecosystems at Camp CBG.
Free drop-in programs are held every weekend at the Children’s Growing Garden and Kleinman Family Cove. Topics vary throughout the summer, but all will engage children with fun activities to learn more about plants and healthy ecosystems.
Summer camps offer week-long sessions for a variety of interests for children ages 2 to 15.
Nature Nights and Family Tent Campouts are a different way to experience the Garden. These programs introduce families to what happens at the Garden as the sun sets.
Nature Nights participants end the evening with s’mores.
Grow a “green” family in your home and at the Garden this summer.
Garden blog followers may remember that in “How to Train Your Plant” I demonstrated a way to grow a bean seed in a plastic bag to test geotropism. I started working on that project around Thanksgiving week last year. At that time, I started a few bean bags just to see what would happen. I kept one seed growing in the bag all winter, adding water as needed.
The bean plant grew for five months, leaning toward the window in my office.
The plant produced a white flower about a month ago. I should have taken a picture. Now this week I discovered a seedpod growing where the flower had been! In the picture, you can see the wilted flower petals still hanging from the tip of the reddish colored pod. Botanically speaking, this is the fruit of the plant, even though you might not think of beans as fruit in your diet.
The red fruit was hidden under the leaves.
So if you try this activity, and you stick with it for six months, you, too, may be rewarded with a little treasure!
You can engage your family in calculating the amount of water you conserve. Make a list of all the ways you are going to try to conserve water, and then keep track of how much water you save. For instance, if you use water only when you’re ready to rinse after brushing your teeth, credit yourselves with saving 15 cups of water each time anyone brushes teeth. At the end of the month, add up the total amount of water you saved and celebrate your achievement.
