A large family, widely distributed, chiefly tropical. Ours are herbs,
or shrubs; leaves opposite or in whorls; flowers regular, usually
perfect; calyx with four teeth or none; corolla with four or five
united lobes, often hairy inside; stamens on the corolla, as many as
its lobes and alternate with them; ovary inferior, with one or two
styles; fruit a capsule, berry, or stone-fruit. Coffee, Quinine, and
Madder, used for dye, belong to this family. I am told that the latter
plant is escaping around Salt Lake and is well established there. The
Latin name means "red."
There are many kinds of Houstonia, North American, usually growing
in tufts, leaves opposite; flowers small; calyx four-lobed; corolla
funnel-form or salver-form, four-lobed; style slender, with two
long stigmas; fruit a capsule. Sometimes the flowers are perfect,
but usually they are of two kinds, one kind with high anthers and
short pistil, the other kind with long pistil and anthers inside the
corolla-tube; visiting insects carry pollen from the high anthers of
the one to the high stigmas of the other, and from the low anthers to
the low stigmas, thus ensuring cross-pollination.
[Sidenote: =Desert Innocence=
_Houstònia rùbra_
=Pink and white
Summer
Arizona=]
A pretty little desert plant, about two inches high, forming close
tufts of sage-green foliage, like harsh moss, with stiff needle-like
leaves and woody stems, sprinkled with charming little pink and white
flowers. The corolla is three-eighths of an inch across, with a long
slender tube, the stamens lilac, and the odd little nodding capsules
have two round lobes. This grows in the dreadful sandy wastes of the
Petrified Forest.
[Sidenote: =Kelloggia=
_Kellóggia galioìdes_
=Spring, summer
White, pink, yellowish
West, etc.=]
The only kind, a slender little plant, from six inches to a foot tall,
usually with smooth leaves, with small stipules. The tiny flowers are
white, pink, or greenish-yellow, with a bristly calyx, and the corolla
usually has four petals, but sometimes five or three; the stigmas two.
The fruit is covered with hooked bristles. This grows in mountain
woods, as far east as Wyoming.
[Illustration: Kelloggia galioides.