Blue to Purple Flowers 279 



with the lobes convolute in the bud, and each with a hollow 

 deflexed spur or projection below. 



BLUE GREEK VALERIAN 



Polemonium confertum. Polemonium Family 



Stems: from a tufted rootstock. Leaves: alternate, leaflets mostly 

 two to three divided, the divisions from round-oval to oblong-linear. 

 Flowers: dense, corolla with rounded lobes. Fruit: ovules three in 

 each cell. 



This species of Greek Valerian grows at high altitudes, 

 the bright blue flowers being erect, fragrant, and growing 

 in densely congested heads. The plant is hairy, the petioles 

 of the radical leaves are conspicuously scarious-dilated and 

 sheathing at the base, and the leaflets are very small, and so 

 crowded that they appear to be growing in fascicles or 

 whorls. 



Polemonium humile, or Purple Greek Valerian, has 

 shorter, stouter stems than the preceding species, and is 

 much branched. The leaflets are mostly oblong, and the 

 purplish flowers grow in flat-topped clusters, the ample, 

 rounded lobes of the corolla being much longer than the 

 tube. The seeds are one or two in each cell. This is almost 

 an arctic-alpine plant. 



MOUNTAIN PHACELIA 



Phacelia sericea. Water-leaf Family 



Stems: simple, virgate, canescent, leafy to the top. Leaves: pinnately 

 parted into numerous linear and again pinnatifid divisions, silky-canes- 

 cent. Flowers: in short spikes, crowded in a naked spike-like thyrsus; 

 calyx-lobes linear; corolla very open-campanulate, cleft to the middle; 

 stamens long exserted. 



A glorious plant, with rich purple-blue flowers clustered 

 in huge long spike-like panicles, and handsome deeply cleft 



