Native Plants & Trees

I was invited to spend some time today with the gifted class at Teche Elementary. Patrice Greig Royer let me know that her students have been very interested in science and nature lately, and I came up with a lesson plan from there. I decided to collect branches and leaves from twelve different plants and vines that are native to St. Martin Parish—hackberry, water oak, bald cypress, mulberry, dwarf palmetto, sweet gum, red cedar, wax myrtle, sweet pecan, green ash, swamp maple and muscadine.

I brought poster board, pencils, pencil colors and crayons. Students were instructed to select a plant, and they had ten minutes to draw it. We talked about the difference between deciduous and evergreen trees. They learned about simple leaves versus compound leaves. And we talked about native versus non-native species. When they had finished drawing, we went around the table and identified each tree, and they wrote down the name of it next to their illustration. In a world that is increasingly abstract and virtual, I think that one of the healthiest attitudes to cultivate, for adults and children alike, is an awareness of the natural world. How are we rooted to this planet? What are the plants around us?

I brought a giant map of the Atchafalaya Basin, unfolded it on the table, and we pointed out Cecilia on the map, then the Mississippi River and the Atchafalaya River, and we learned about tributaries and distributaries. “Oh, I get it,” one of the students said. “It’s like it distributes the water.” We had a lot of fun, and it seemed to spark their curiosity.