do you pick flowers, wild or otherwise?

[slartybartfast]

when dd walks home her friend always picks wild flowers but i dont allow dd.
anyone read the paper/hear this story today.

or has this been covered earlier

From an early age, the only flowers DD has been allowed to pick are daisies.

'Take only photos, leave only footprints'

From the brief report I heard, the police were weirdly heavy handed but kids surely should know to leave daffs for everyone's enjoyment.

It's been covered elsewhere. The indignant family in question has been on frowny, arm-foldy photos all over the place... meh... idiots. I occasionally pick flowers from my own garden but was always told, growing up, that it was wrong to pick wild flowers on the grounds that 'if everyone did it, there would be none left'.

agree chil, they were idiots
mine were always taught to smell the flowers,
although i used to pick bluebells in my youth

I was going to start a thread on this, saw it in the metro.

I don't let dd pick anything apart from daisys

I think the family is being silly and irresponsible.

I dont think we should complain about the police ponting out the kids were doing something wrong if the watched them for 20 mins and the parents did nothing.

We cant complain that we dont see bobbies on the beat and that low level crime is never deal with minor offences leading to anti social behaviour escalating and then at the same time complain when the police tell people not to do things.

littleducks you have just sent me flying back to my childhood. I loved making daisy chains, I can smell them now!

Yes, they were stupid idiots,'allowing their children to pick daffodils ( and it sounds like it was lots too). Selfish and stupid.

On my way to school there are lots of beautiful patches of daffodils. Me and tthe Dcs absolutely love to look at them. Several times, I do not know if it is dogs or idiots but there is a lot of them who are brocken, they still look beautiful but are "detached" from the ground and I admit I do not leave them there but take them home with put them in water. I thought I was doing a "good deed" but am I at risque of being told off?

risk! sorry french speaking roots taking over

I used to pick one of each wild flower as a girl and press them to keep in a book with a drawing beside it! Now I tell my kids its illegal.

DD is too young to try picking flowers yet, but she will be taught not to. From what I've read, I don't think the police were heavy handed. They were told to stop, told they would be let off, but they were warned that it was criminal damage and could lead to arrest if they didn't stop.

I've heard a lot of people, on the radio and so on, complaining that it was a waste of police resources, and I agree. However, it's those parents that have wasted the resources.

I'm sure there was a thread about this yesterday, but I can't find it.

It's wrong to pick flowers that aren't yours. In a park, they are there for everyone to enjoy - I'd everyone picked one or two, in no time at all there would be none. That would be a shame. And these people were taking dozens!

We have a problem round here with people, mostly tourists taking fistfuls of native bluebells from the woods in April.
It's just selfish.

I thought bluebell were now protected flowers?

It doesn't stop those with a sense of entitlement, although they do get reported more often.
We also have gardeners digging up chunks to transplant with no regard for the specific environment bluebells need to thrive.

DS (6) loves flowers & is very impulsive, has taken hard work to socialise him into not picking flowers in the park/public displays/cultivated gardens.

Daisies, brambles, dogrose, anything spreading all over the pavement, dandelions, false nettles, some speedwells are all fair game, though.

I would love to see the child's mother's face if someone picked flowers from her own garden.

If they've clearly been planted then it's just theft. Wildflowers in the woods, well I'd say they're OK to pick, a small bunch at least. So what ragged said!

My dad told us if you brought a particular wild flower into the house you'd wet the bed. We never were quite sure which plant so avoided them all for a few years, just in case.

It isn't really OK to pick wildflowers in the woods.
As I already mentioned.

I've always told the DCs not to pick flowers in the park - they are there for everyone to enjoy (and at the public's expense!) surely it's a no-brainer? Like others said, it's as bad as picking them from someone's garden. I only let them pick daisies.

Appley, a French name for the dandelion is 'piss-en-lit' - while the leaves are edible as a salad, they are apparently a diuretic!

The problem with taking 'a small bunch of wildflowers' is that (a) they are part of an ecosystem (b) some plants are endangered species.

Its really worse than taking cultivated daffs from a public park, even if that is more obviously theft and antisocial.

The woman who let the kids pick the daffodiles lives in the town i live in. Was quite a big local story here. www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/8918012.Park_daffodil_row_mum___I_m_amazed_by_the_attention_/

that was an interesting link backtobasics.

Depends on where you are. Wouldn't do it in this small overcrowded country, but have picked wild flowers, and might well do it again, in Sweden where there are far more flowers than people to pick them and where people (including me) generally have a very good idea of which flowers are endangered species; we were taught that sort of thing in infants. And even toddlers are taught how to pick flowers without damaging the roots. But not in this country, no I wouldn't.

I picked wild flowers in the UK as a child - carefully, obviously - and I wouldn't dream of telling DD not to. If there aren't enough wild flowers to pick, then the answer is that we need more of them about, and telling children that they can't pick them isn't IMO going to lead to the sort of environment in which wild flowers flourish.