_Water-Leaf Family_
Herbs, mostly rough-hairy, with alternate or basal leaves, and perfect
regular 5-parted flowers in cymes, spikes or racemes, curled when in
bud and uncoiling as they flower; stamens 5, inserted on the corolla
and alternate with its lobes; filaments thread-like; flowers yellow,
purple or white.
Plant rough-hairy; leaves lanceolate and simple or
pinnate; flowers blue or violet-purple. =Phacelia.=
Plant smooth; leaves round reniform or cordate;
flowers white. =Romanzoffia.=
[Illustration: Phacelia sericea (Graham) A. Gray. (⅓ Nat.) Mountain
Phacelia.]
[Illustration: Phacelia heterophylla Pursh. (⅓ Nat.)]
[Sidenote: =Phacelia heterophylla= Pursh.]
Rough-hairy; stem stout, 6—24 inches high. Leaves white-hairy,
lanceolate to ovate, acute, pinnately and obliquely, striately veined,
the lower tapering into petioles, commonly with 1—2 pairs of small
lateral leaflets. Flowers in a dense spike; corolla bluish, longer than
the oblong-lanceolate or linear calyx lobes; filaments much exserted,
sparingly bearded.
In the Cougar Valley in the Selkirks; flowering in July.
[Sidenote: =Phacelia sericea= (Graham) A. Gray. _Mountain Phacelia._]
Silky-hairy or canescent throughout, 6—18 inches high, leafy to the
top. Leaves pinnately parted into linear or narrow oblong, numerous,
often pinnatifid divisions, the lower petioled, the upper nearly
sessile. Flowers crowded in an elongated spike, corolla violet, blue or
white, open-campanulate, cleft to the middle; stamens much exserted.
In dry ground and open slopes throughout the region; flowering in June
and July.
[Sidenote: =Romanzoffia sitchensis= Bong. _Romanzoffia._]
Stems slender, weak, 3—6 inches long. Leaves mainly at the root, with
slender petioles, alternate, round-cordate, or reniform, with 7—11
crenate, glandular-tipped lobes. Flowers more or less racemose on
slender, weak scapes with spreading pedicels longer than the flowers;
calyx lobes smooth, much shorter than the delicately veiny pale pink or
usually white funnel-form corolla with yellow throat and broad rounded
lobes.
On constantly dripping ledges of wet rocks, rare in the region
generally but rather frequent about Lake Louise and Lake O’Hara;
flowering during July.