[Sidenote: =Alpine Phacelia=
_Phacèlia alpìna_
=Lilac
Summer
Utah, Nev., etc.=]
This just misses being a very pretty plant, for the leaves are
attractive, but the flowers are too small and too dull in color for
the general effect to be good. The stems are about ten inches tall,
purplish and downy, and the leaves are dull green and rather downy,
with conspicuous veins. The buds are hairy and the flowers are lilac
and crowded in coiled clusters, to which the long stamens give a very
feathery appearance. This is found in the mountains, as far east as
Montana and Colorado, and reaches an altitude of over twelve thousand
feet.
[Sidenote: =Wild Heliotrope=
_Phacèlia crenulàta_
=Lilac
Spring
Arizona=]
This is a fine plant, from six to eighteen inches tall, with purplish
stems and handsome coarse foliage, all rough, hairy, and very sticky.
The flowers are lilac, with purple stamens and pistil, and the general
effect is that of a large coarse Heliotrope. The flowers have a
pleasant scent, but the foliage has a strong and disagreeable smell,
and it grows on the plateau in the Grand Canyon.
[Sidenote: =Arizona Phacelia=
_Phacèlia Arizònica_
=White, mauve
Spring
Arizona=]
A little desert plant, not very pretty, with several hairy
flower-stalks, from three to six inches tall, springing from a rosette
of soft thickish leaves, slightly hairy, dull green in color, and
something the shape of the leaves of _P. Fremontii_, but the lobes
not nearly so small. The flowers are in tightly coiled clusters; the
corolla a little more than a quarter of an inch across, dull white,
with a pinkish line on each lobe and lilac anthers, the general effect
being mauve.
There are a good many kinds of Nemophila, natives of North America,
mostly Californian, slender, fragile herbs, with alternate or opposite
leaves, more or less divided, and usually large, single flowers, with
rather long flower-stalks. The calyx has an appendage, resembling
an extra little sepal, between each of the five sepals, which makes
these plants easy to recognize, and the corolla is wheel-shaped or
bell-shaped, usually with ten, small appendages within, at the base,
and the petals are rolled up in the bud; the stamens are short; the
styles partly united. The name is from the Greek, meaning "grove
lover," because these plants like the shade.
[Illustration: Alpine Phacelia--P. alpina.