[Sidenote: _Sphaerostígma tortuòsa. (Oenothera)_
=White
Spring
Nevada=]
A queer little, stunted-looking, desert plant, with almost no stem, but
with several branches, spreading flat on the ground, stiff, smooth and
purplish, with crowded clusters of flowers, leaves, and pods, mostly
at the ends, the whole forming flat clumps, from six to ten inches
across. The leaves are smooth, slightly thickish, pale bluish-green and
toothless; the buds are erect, and the flowers are over a quarter of an
inch across, white, with yellow anthers and a green stigma. The pods
are very much twisted and form odd little snarly bunches.
There are only a few kinds of Chylisma; the flowers in terminal
clusters; the calyx with a more or less funnel-form tube and four
lobes; the petals four, not notched; the stamens eight, unequal; the
stigma with a round top, the capsule long, membranous, with a stalk.
[Sidenote: =Chylisma=
_Chylísma scapoìdea var. clavaefórmis (Oenothera)_
=White
Spring
Ariz., Utah=]
A charming desert plant, from a few inches to a foot tall, with one
or more, pinkish, smooth, rather leafy stems, springing from a pretty
clump of smooth, bluish-green leaves. The delicate flowers are about
three-quarters of an inch across and form a graceful cluster of several
or many blossoms. The petals are white or yellow, often tinted with
pink, with some specks of maroon at the base, and the sepals are
pinkish-yellow; the stamens pale yellow; the stigma green; the pods
erect.
There are several kinds of Pachylophus; perennials, stemless or nearly
so; leaves from the root; calyx downy, with a long tube; petals white
or pink; stamens eight, with threadlike filaments, the alternate ones
longer; style threadlike; stigma four-cleft; capsule woody.
[Sidenote: =White Evening Primrose=
_Pachýlophus marginàtus (Oenothera)_
=White
Summer
Ariz., Utah, Nev., Col.=]
This has a few large flowers, three inches or more across, with
pure-white diaphanous petals, fading to pink, and pink calyx-lobes.
The buds are erect, hairy and pink, and the flowers spring from a
cluster of long, downy root-leaves, narrowing to slender leaf-stalks,
with hairs on the veins and on the toothed and jagged margins, and
have almost no flower-stalk, but the hairy calyx-tube is so long,
sometimes as much as seven inches, that it looks like a stalk. The root
is thick and woody and the capsule is egg-shaped and ribbed, with no
stem. There is a patch of these wonderful flowers in the Grand Canyon
on Bright Angel trail, halfway between the rim and the plateau, where
in a shaded spot beside a great rock the pure blossoms seem to shed a
moonlight radiance. They are equally beautiful on the dry plains of
Utah, where they grow in quantities.
[Illustration: White Evening Primrose--Pachylophus marginatus.]
[Illustration: Chylisma scapoidea var. clavaeformis.