I 66 CALOCHORTUS VENUSTUS. MAKIl'ejSA LILY. 



the Transactions of the society a few years after by I\Ir. Bentham 

 under tlie name of CalocJiortus vciuLstus, — that is to sa)-, hterally, 

 the Calochortus which is as charming as Venus — the beautilul 

 Calochortus. Many other species were discovered by Douglas 

 and some have been added to the hst since that time by subsequent 

 explorers, till the list of known species, according to Mr. Wat- 

 son's recent enumeration, now embraces thirty-two species; but 

 not one of them has been able to dispute with this, the exclu- 

 sive right to its specific name. It adds to its beauty the charm 

 of variety, for no two of them are exactly alike in form or color. 

 The three flowers on our plate are from three separate roots, 

 qiven by Mr. Theodore Schuster of Brooklyn, Nevv^ York, who 

 received them from Verada county, California. These three, as 

 we see, differ from one another. The lower one is nearly white 

 in its ground color, and the spot on the petal is nearly triangu- 

 lar ; the petals also are loose, and barely touch one another 

 when expanded. The upper one is purple, and the spot is 

 broadly oval, while tlie colors at the base are more penciled, and 

 with less decided limits to their lines. The other flower is 

 smaller, the petals overlap one another, the spot is much longer 

 than wide, and all the colors are more distinctly outlined. Among 

 European florists some of the most distinct forms have been 

 selected and bear separate garden names. The beauty of its 

 flower struck the original Mexican inhabitants of California, 

 before that piece of territory became annexed to the United 

 States ; and it is from them we have the common name " Mari- 

 posa," which is said to mean "butterfly," and the plant is com- 

 monly called Mariposa Lily, or Butterfly flower. 



The plant, of course, is not a lily, though belonging to the 

 order LiliacccE, of which the true Lily is the type. It may be 

 remembered that Lilmm has the sepals and petals nearly alike, 

 so that it makes what botanists call a six-parted perianth. In 

 our plant there are but three distinct petals, though Icokmg 

 through the divisions of the lower flower in our plate, we see by 

 the spot on the interior of the small sepals and some other 



