Identifying Flowers

This week I am taking a Flowering Plants class.  We learned flower terminology and have spent the last two days identifying flowers in the mountains using a dichotomous key.  My favorite part is taking the flower apart and looking at how each piece is put together.

I've always enjoyed flowers.  They are colorful and pretty.  Now, as I walk by one, I am tempted to pick one up and study it closely.  Part of finding the name of the flower involves answering a number of questions about each flower.  In order to answer the questions, you have to study all the aspects of the flower first.  We have magnifying lenses that help us see the tiniest details.  We pull parts of the flower away from the others to study more fully.

Today we were given a seemingly common white flower to identify.  My first surprise came when I discovered that the center of the flower was actually over 20 tiny and complete flowers squished together.  They were surrounded by 4 white bracts that actually look like the petals of a flower. There was nothing common about this seemingly simple white flower.

As we continued to practice, we noticed that it was very difficult to answer the questions if we didn't first take a moment to study every aspect of the flower, its stem, and its leaves.  If we tried to identify it too soon, we would get frustrated and usually get it wrong.  We had to know it first.

As these words fall from my fingers, I am thinking of people.  How many times do we try to identify or label a person before we completely know all their parts?  How many times have we slapped a name on a person before discovering how they are put together?  Perhaps that annoying habit of theirs is something altogether different like those dozens of tiny flowers.  Perhaps when we look carefully at each part of that person, we will find something surprising and amazing.