76 Popular Studies of California Wild Flowers 



Family. The Mentzelias were named for Dr. C. Mentzel, a German 

 botanist of the seventeenth century. The specific name of M. laevi- 

 caulis means smooth-stemmed. It is a biennial plant and blooms 

 only during daylight hours, blossoming earlier in the southland, 

 where it is of quite frequent occurrence in dry washes and the 

 interior valleys and canons of that section. Farther north, it may 

 be found blooming in dry, gravelly stream-beds, throughout the 

 Coast Ranges and Sierra Nevada foothills, from July until Sep- 

 tember. Its golden blossoms are open all day, but close at eventide. 



Mentzelia lindleyi, the Evening Star, is a slender annual, quite 

 similar and possibly handsomer in appearance, but is one of the 

 vespertine flowers, so called because they bloom at vesper time. 

 From sunset until sunrise, night-flying moths may flit from its deli- 

 cately silken, golden blooms. Its sharply tipped petals are a more 

 golden yellow than those of M. laevicaulis, and are stained with 

 vermilion at their base. They have a more limited range, but are 

 found in May and June in the inner Coast Ranges of the Bay Region. 



The Spanish-Calif ornians called the plant "buena mujer" (good 

 woman), because its leaves are barbed with little hooked bristles 

 which cling tightly to one. The name of "stick-leaf" is sometimes 

 used by Americans. Rough or stinging hairs are characteristic 

 features of the Loasa Family, of which we have three genera in 

 California. The family name, Loasa, is apparently from a native 

 name for a South American species. But the Mentzelias are all 

 Western flowers. We have two other genera listed as having one 

 species each, Eucnide urens and Petalonyx thurberi, natives of the 

 southeastern desert and its borders. 



For some reason, Blazing Stars are not as plentiful now as in 

 the past, and from many localities there are complaints from nature 

 lovers that they cannot find these blossoms. 



"To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own 

 beauty, and in the same Held, it beholds, every hour, a picture which 

 was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again!' 

 EMERSON. 



