72 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



I have followed the books in calling the flowers orange- 

 red though this term is far from being adequate. With this, 

 as with many another common species, its abundance and con- 

 spicuousness made it easily distinguished by the early botan- 

 ists who were, in consequence, insufficiently impressed with 

 the necessity for describing the flowers minutely and subse- 

 quent manual makers, most of whom have been more familiar 

 with the appearance of the plants in the herbarium than in the 

 field have simply copied the mistakes of their predecessors. 

 An absolutely accurate description of the flowers is probably 

 not to be found in the books reputed to be the arbiters of such 

 matters. In one feature, however, all agree : the hoods are, 

 indeed, "deep bright orange." But the hoods are only part 

 of the flower; exactly half the flower, in fact, when we are dis- 

 cussing color, for the reflexed petals which about equal the 

 divisions of the corona in size are themselves as bright and 

 fully as effective in giving conspicuousness to the flower clus- 

 ter. These latter parts the books dismiss with scant ceremony; 

 in fact, one of our most authoritative manuals does not even 

 mention them. Those which do are almost as bad for they de- 

 scribe them variously as greenish, greenish orange or purplish 

 orange, when in reality the average plant has orange-red 

 petals that are frequently more highly colored than the hood 

 itself. In the bud the edges of the petals are frequently deep 

 red and while the outer surface may at this time be greenish, 

 the inner surface has more of yellow in it than either. In the 

 open flower the outside of the petal is often deep red. There 

 is, to be sure, considerable diversity in the coloration of in- 

 dividual specimens and it may be possible that some of the 

 flower clusters that in the distance blend into an unattractive 

 brick-red may have more or less green in the petals. In any 

 event, these are not the ones likely to be selected for cultiva- 

 tion or for inclusion in a bouquet of field flowers. By a little 

 careful selection it is possible to secure flowers that are nearly 



