MARIPOSA TULIP. MARIPOSA LILY (Calochortus cata- 

 lince, Wats.). Flowers 2 to 3 inches across, tulip-shaped, erect 

 and terminal on loosely branching stems 1 to 2 feet high; white 

 or lilac with a dark-red blotch at the base of each petal. Leaves 

 grass-like. Common throughout Southern California and the 

 Coast Islands, on plains and foot hills, blooming from February 

 until May. 



The name Mariposa, applied to this charming flower, is 

 adopted from the Spanish-Calif ornians and means "butter- 

 fly." The appropriateness of the term will be denied by no 

 one who comes for the first time upon a patch of the showy, 

 exquisitely mottled flowers, gleaming like resting butterflies 

 indeed, amid some sunny expanse of wild grasses. 



The relationship of Calochortus is nearer to the Tulip of the 

 Old World than to the Lily, a fact which makes the popular 

 term Mariposa Tulip more accurate for it than the more gener- 

 ally used Mariposa Lily. Many of the species so closely re- 

 semble one another, and are so variable, that it is work for an 

 expert to identify them. C. catalince derives its specific name 

 from the fact of its having been first described from a specimen 

 collected some 40 years ago on Santa Catalina Island. 



19 



