Popular Studies of California Wild Flowers 113 



or affectionate nicknames, are among our best known varieties. 

 Very popular are the little Chinese Houses, Collinsia bicolor (there 

 are fifteen or more species), quite common throughout California, 

 one variety of which is called Innocence. The name Collinsia is 

 commemorative of Zaccheus Collins, a Philadelphia botanist of a 

 century past. The California Bee-plant is afflicted with Scrophu- 

 laria calif ornica Cham, as a scientific appellation (which we admit 

 is a long name for these Pixey-like blossoms of dull green and 

 reddish hue), but as the popular name would indicate, they are 

 famous honey flowers and well distributed in California. Masses 

 of bright red Indian Paint Brushes, Castilleias, are to be seen on 

 hillsides and meadowlands in various localities. The popular scien- 

 tific name, Castilleia, commemorates a noted Spanish botanist Cas- 

 tillejo. In form, these flowers strongly resemble their relative, the 

 Indian Warrior ; but they are looked upon with suspicion by scien- 

 tists, as developing vampire ways and being more or less parasitic 

 in nature. The Owl's Clover or Cream Sacs, Orthocarpus, which 

 color the landscapes in early spring with their pretty pink and 

 magenta blooms, w r ere known to the Spanish as Escobita, meaning 

 "little broom." There are many varieties of this favorite flower ; 

 more commonly, they are pinkish-purple in color, but others are 

 almost white ; and a certain yellowish variety was known to Indian 

 children as "Coyote Tails." 



Closely related, and in the same group with the Orthocarpus 

 and the Pedicularis, are the singular and interesting Adenostegias, 

 of which the little Bird's Beak, Adenostegia rigida Benth., is the 

 type ; and familiar to school children, who doubtless conferred this 

 name upon the plant because of the odd little beak or tip of its 

 corolla. The tiny, purplish-colored flowers, like birds in their nests, 

 are almost enveloped in the green calyx. The blossoms would hardly 

 be noticed but for the prevalence of the little gray-green bushes 

 throughout our chaparral regions. The plants prefer dry habitats 

 and often mass themselves in such profusion along mountain road- 

 sides as to be a conspicuous feature of the landscape. Indians valued 

 the plant as an emetic. The genus is confined to the West and is 

 characteristic of California and the Great Basin. Of the twenty-one 

 described species, all but five are in California and nine are confined 

 to this State. Five of these varieties were first described by Mrs. 

 Roxana Ferris, director of the famous Dudley Herbarium, at Stan- 

 ford University. The most interesting of these species is a quaint, 

 grayish little denizen of tule lands, Adenostegia pahnata Ferris, 

 known as the Ferris Adenostegia, which has been collected but 

 rarely, and was discovered by Mrs. Ferris near College City, Colusa 

 County. It somewhat resembles Owl's Clover, Orthocarpus, but 

 has an unusual, grayish color. 



One could go on indefinitely discussing interesting members of 

 the Figwort Family. But not the least of these are the odd, fra- 

 grant, little rose-red Elephant Heads of our Alpine heights. 



