I 66 STENOSIPHON VIRGATUS. THE STENOSIPHON. 



as growing on high prairies and in rocky soil, and Ruffner says it 

 is common in nordiern Texas. One author refers to it as being 

 a pecuHar feature of dry rocky knolls, covering with graceful 

 beauty, spots on which litde else will grow at all, and we may 

 almost imagine it furnished the 



" Rocks rich with summer garlands," 



in the 



" savannahs where the bison roves," 



and 



" where the desert eagle wheels and screams," 



of which Bryant tells us in one of his poems. These arid parts 

 of our territory seem to be its chosen home. The plant illus- 

 trated was from Texas, and kindly presented to us by Dr. George 

 Thurber. The drawing was made quite late in the season, after 

 the plant had materially exhausted itself; and the first flowers 

 were rather larger than we have represented, and the leaves 

 during the eariy part of the summer are neariy as large as 

 weeping-willow leaves. It grows vigorously in good garden 

 soil, as if it did not need much coaxing to give up its love for 

 its dry native home. It does not attempt to flower in Philadel- 

 phia gardens till frost may be expected to appear. Eut it trans- 

 plants easily into a box or pot, and with very slight protection 

 from frost blooms freely all the winter long. Torrey and Gray 

 speak of it as a perennial ; but in our experience it dies after 

 flowering. Its woody roots are probably decepdve : at best it is 

 perhaps but a biennial. It is however very easily propagated 

 by cutdngs, and in this way can be continued by the florist, 

 without difficulty, from year to year. Its gracefully elegant 

 racemose branchlets of rosy-tinted white flowers specially com- 

 mend it to the ardstic designer in flower work. It will be a 

 popular winter-flowering plant when its merits in this particular 

 become better known. 



The lovers of peculiarides in structure will find in the long 

 slender tubes, already noted, an interesting subject for examina- 

 tion. They are so long and slender, so hair-like, that if green 



