96 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



Quaker lady by others. The fringed gilia is the 

 forerunner of a whole procession of gilias which 

 are to be found throughout California, fifty species 

 or so, 1 not one of which is indigenous to the Atlan- 

 tic seaboard. There their nearest relatives are the 

 phloxes and polemoniums. In pink and lilac, white 

 and blue, purple and golden yellow, the gilias are a 

 glorious fellowship, arraying desert and plain and 

 mountain side in acres of solid color a free gift 

 of cheerful beauty. One species (Gilia Calif or- 

 nica) is universally known in Southern California, 

 where it is common, as prickly phlox, and its bristly 

 stems of fresh green are conspicuous in early spring 

 amid other greenery of the mesa, but the rosy phlox- 

 like blossoms are not seen until towards the end 

 of the rainy season. The ferny foliage of the 

 phacelias, or wild heliotropes, adds to the verdure 

 of the same slopes in early spring, but their blue 

 flowers, set in coils like the heliotrope's, are rarely 

 seen before March. This plant offers one of the in- 

 stances of a common name due to a superficial re- 

 semblance which fooled even the botanists at one 

 time; for although the genus Phacelia is not even 

 in the same family with the heliotropes, the learned 



1 Some botanists are disposed to break the genus Gilia into a 

 number Linanthus, Navarretia, Leptosiphon, etc., but the distinc- 

 tions are not such as all the doctors can agree about. The word 

 Gilia is commemorative of a Spanish botanist named Gil. 



