[Sidenote: _Godètia vimínea_
=Purplish-pink
Summer
Northwest=]
A handsome plant, with nearly smooth, slender, reddish stems, a few
inches to two feet tall, and smooth, pale-green, toothless, narrow
leaves, mostly without leaf-stalks. The buds are erect and the flowers
form a long, loose cluster, with bright purplish-pink petals, half
an inch to over an inch long, with a large, magenta blotch near the
center, or at the tip, and yellowish at base; the stamens and pistil
all purple; the calyx-lobes not caught together, but turned primly
back. This forms fine patches of bright color in rather meadowy
places in Yosemite and elsewhere in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
_G. Dudleyàna_ is pretty and slender, with drooping buds and light
lilac-pink flowers, the petals paler at base, with darker dots, the
calyx-lobes caught together and turned to one side, and also makes
beautiful patches of color on sunny slopes around Yosemite.
There are several kinds of Clarkia, resembling Godetia, but the petals
have claws. The stems are brittle; the leaves mostly alternate, with
short, slender leaf-stalks; the buds nodding; the flowers in terminal
clusters, with four petals, never yellow, and four sepals, turned back;
the stamens eight, those opposite the petals often rudimentary; the
stigma four-lobed; the capsule long, leathery, erect, more or less
four-angled, with many seeds. Named in honor of Captain Clarke, of the
Lewis and Clarke expedition, the first to cross the Rocky Mountains to
the Pacific, in 1806.
[Sidenote: =Clarkia=
_Clàrkia élegans_
=Pink
Spring, summer
California=]
A conspicuous plant, on account of the oddly contrasting colors of
the flowers, and very variable both in size and smoothness. It grows
from six inches to six feet high; the stems more or less branching;
the leaves sometimes toothed and often reddish; the buds and calyxes
often woolly. The flowers are very gay; the sepals being dark red or
purple, the petals, with long, slender claws, bright pink and the
anthers scarlet! The stamens, four long and four short, have a hairy,
reddish scale at the base of each filament, the anthers of the shorter
stamens often white, and the capsule is usually curved, with no stalk,
nearly an inch long, often hairy. When the foliage is red, as it often
is, the various combinations of red in the flowers and leaves are
quite startling. This is common in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada
and Coast Ranges and is often rather shabby looking, but in favorable
situations is very handsome.
[Illustration: Godetia viminea.