LINUM PERENNE. 



PERENNIAL FLAX. 



NATURAL ORDER, LINACEtE. 



LiNUM PERENNE, L. — Smooth and glaucous, one to two and a half feet high, branching above, 

 leafy; leaves linear to linear-lanceolate, three to eighteen lines long, acute ; stipular glands 

 none ; flowers large, blue, in few-flowered corymbs, or scattered on the leafy branches on 

 slender pedicels ; sepals three to five nerved, ovate, acute, or obtuse, one and a half to 

 two and a half lines long; capsule globose, acute, exceeding the sepals, at length dehiscent 

 by ten valves, the prominent false partition long-ciliate ; fruiting pedicels erect or deflexcd. 

 (Botany of California. See also Porter's Flora of Colorado, Watson's Botany of the i,oth 

 Parallel, and Wood's Class-Book of Botany ) 



" Oh, the goodly flax-flower ! 

 It groweth on the hill, 

 And be the breeze awake or sleep, 



It never standeth still. 

 It seemeth all astir with life, 



As if it loved to thrive. 

 As if it had a merry heart 

 Within its stem alive ! " 



HE full force of these lines of Mary Howitt never 



^ imiDressed itself so strongly on the writer as when, high 



up " the hill " in the Rocky Mountains, he gathered for the first 

 time a wild specimen of the plant now illustrated. It was in a 

 particularly barren spot, where even the few things that grow 

 in this inhospitable region hardly dared to risk themselves ; but 

 the Linum pcrenne was doing beautifully, expanding its large, 

 blue flowers to the morning sun " as if it loved to thrive " even 

 in so dreary a place. It is found in quite low elevations, but 

 increases in abundance as it travels up the hillsides. The 

 expression that " it never standeth still " applies better to our 

 Flax than to the closely allied European species of Liimm usita- 



