FLOWERS 69 



forget driving to Oregon over the old dirt road, be- 

 fore the new highway was finished, over Grant's 

 Pass one hot day, and seeing on the hillside above us 

 a colony covering almost an acre of these wonderful 

 plants, the odd skull-shaped Darlingtonia. The sun 

 was in front of us and its effect, shining through 

 these weird, often three-foot leaves, was most won- 

 derful. The blossoms were scarce at that season. We 

 climbed the hillside, which was almost a bog, so 

 many streams were coming down from the melting 

 snow above, and examined the leaves. Many had the 

 cap to the pitcher partly open and in nearly all there 

 was from half an inch to an inch of liquid, and in 

 most of them were dead insects insects that in ex- 

 ploring to find where the rather fetid odor came 

 from, slipped in and finding it impossible to climb 

 out again against the depressed hairs, soon tired and 

 were drowned in the liquid and gradually absorbed. 

 The lapse-time camera on potted plants showed that 

 the cap was very slow in lifting from the top of the 

 pitcher, often taking a week or ten days. The last few 

 years has seen them so commercialized as to threaten 

 extinction, as the weird ghostlike leaves have a very 

 great and peculiar appeal in these days when every- 

 one is looking for new and different forms of plant 

 life. 



