The American Botanist 



VOL. XV JOLIET, ILL., MAY, 1909 No. 2 



" y^o plot so nanpouf, 6e but natune there, 

 ■^lo ivaste so vacant, hut mat/ u^elt emptot/ 

 ^ach faculty of sense, and keep the heart CiAKt'G-^'- 



•^lufahe to love and beauty." 



LIBRARY 

 NEW YORK 

 BOTANlCAl 



THE STORY OF THE SAXIFRAGES. 



By Walter Albion Squires. 



THE little saxifrage (Saxifraga Californica) is one of our 

 early spring blossoms. In this part of California its 

 delicate white or pink-tinted flowers appear early in February. 

 Its slender, red scapes delicate scarlet-tipped sepals, and tiny 

 pink stamens give to it a beauty and grace which are quite 

 its own. It is usually found only on cool, shady northern 

 slopes, making its home among the mosses and maidenhair 

 ferns. Indeed, it seems rather shy and modest as though it 

 were not quite at home in the "land of sunshine and roses." 



Our coldest season is its season of growth. When chilly 

 winds from the Pacific sweep through the Golden Gate and 

 the frost is on the hills of the North Peninsula it pushes up 

 its slender scapes in the mossy glens of cold canyons. By the 

 first of February it is in blossom. Before spring is fairly be- 

 gun it is ready to mature its seeds, and then it creeps back 

 under its coverlet of mosses to sleep through the long summer 

 d) until the rains of another winter. Little wanderer from that 

 »— ^ interesting family of plants which encompass the pole in the 

 ^ northern hemisphere, it is not like many of our California 

 ■-y flowers which fling back the flood light of summer days with 

 13 gold as bright as the sunbeams. It is still a lover of the cold. 



