FOUR O'CLOCK FAMILY 



Usually succulent herbs or low shrubs with fragile stems and 

 swollen joints, and opposite entire leaves. Perfect flowers, 

 without corolla, but the delicate calyx colored like a corolla. 



CALIFORNIA FOUR O'CLOCK (Mirabilis California, Gray.) 

 Flowers magenta, open bell-shaped, the spreading lobes 

 deeply 2-cleft, each flower in an involucre, disposed in ter- 

 minal" clusters or solitary in the axils. The blossoms expand 

 about the middle of the afternoon (whence the common name 

 Four o'Clock), remaining open until early the next day. The 

 stems are woody below, but herbaceous above, forking re- 

 peatedly, with a disposition to support themselves lazily on 

 convenient bushes. 



This is a verv common flower in Southern California, bloom- 

 ing on drv hillsides up to about 4,000 feet, from January until 

 July. It" is rather variable, and botanists have separated 

 as varieties certain desert forms found east to Nevada. 



Mr. \V. L. Jepson, in his "Flora of California,' records 

 Wishbone Bush as a common name for this species. 



M . FroebeUii, Greene, bears bright rosy flowers, leaves sticky 

 and hairy. 



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