BOTANICAL DESCRIPTION. 6 I 



SHOOTING STAR. 

 Dodecatheon Meadia. Linn. 



Leaves varying from obovate to lanceolate, entire or more or less toothed ; scope 

 three to fifteen inches high ; umbel two to twenty flowered. So far as we can make out 

 only one species occurs, which extends across the continent, and on the Pacific side 

 through fully forty degrees of latitude (viz.: from Gaudaloupe Island, Lower California, 

 to those within Behring Straits), varying immensely and inextricably. The Pacific forms 

 (which usually have rather shorter or blunter anthers than the Atlantic), may, as to their 

 leading features, be mainly but loosely arranged under many varieties (Brewer & 

 Watson). 



WILD PEONY. 



Pceonia Broivnii. Dougl. 



Leaves thick, one or two-ternately, compound, the leaflets ternately and pinnately 

 lobed ; follicles three to five. San Bernardino to Vancouver and Western Utah, but 

 rare east of the Sierra Nevada. Stems ten to eighteen inches high, smooth, striate, erect 

 when growing, but gradually bending over until maturity, when the follicles rest on the 

 ground. Leaves glaucous beneath, either glaucous or glabrous above. Sepals green, 

 sometimes quite unequal in size. Petals scarcely larger than the sepals, thick and 

 leathery, dull, dark red. Follicles very leathery, smooth, erect, one to one and one-half 

 inches long. This plant endures a great range of station and climate, from wet to very 

 dry soils, and from the hot plains of Southern California to near the confines of perpetual 

 snow on the mountains (Brewer & Watson). 



CHINESE CIGARETTE BLOSSOM. 



Nicotiana glauca. Graham. 



Arborescent, soft-woody below, glaucous and glabrous ; leaves long-petioled, ovate 

 and subio-ordate, entire or repand ; flowers loosely paniculate ; corolla greenish, becoming 

 yellow, inch or two long, tubular, contracted at throat, and with erect five-crenate limb 

 not longer than the orifice. Bot. Mag. t. 2837. Native of Buenos Ayres, not rare in 

 cultivation, rather widely naturalized in S. California and S. Texas. 



