120 FAMILIAR FLOWERS OF FIELD AND GARDEN. 



Portulaca Portnlaca comes to us from South 



Poridiaca America, Its brilliant flowers, in 



(jrandijiora. ^\^^^q closel}' resem])ling a wild rose, 

 are found snnggled close to the ground in nearly 

 every country garden. The foliage is narrow like 

 fir-needles, but of a thick and pulpy nature ; the 

 stems are also thick and are ruddy in color. There is 

 a great variety of colors among the flowers — crimson, 

 pure pink, scarlet-pink, magenta, scarlet, pale and deep 

 yellow, bnif, and orange. The double variety, in my 

 estimation, is not as beautiful as the 

 single. A troublesome weed of the 

 gai-den resembling portulaca, but 

 having a broader and blunt leaf, is 

 called P. oUracea^ purslane, or pus- 

 ley. Charles Dudley Warner, in My 

 Summer in a Garden, has drawn 

 particular attention to this omnipres- 

 ent weed ; it is a great nuisance to 

 the amateur gardener, but he can 

 console himself with the thought that it M^as handed 

 down to him from his ancestors; they brought it 

 with them from the old country, and it once sup- 

 plied the table with a much-relished dish of greens 

 which has since been displaced by spinach and young 

 beet-tops. Portulaca is an annual which flowers all 

 sumn)er. 



Leaf of Pusley. 



