SAND VERBENA (Abronia villosa, Wats.). Flowers pink 

 to lilac, showy and rather fragrant, salver-shaped with a long 

 tube, in many-flowered, long-peduncled heads, terminal or 

 axillary on trailing, succulent sticky stems. Blooming in 

 spring and early summer in sandy situations, sea-coast and 

 desert, Southern California and eastward to Arizona and 

 Utah. In March parts of the Colorado Desert are sheeted 

 an almost solid pink with the abounding flowers of a larger- 

 flowered variety of this plant, which botanists are disposed 

 to call var. aurita. Somewhat similar is A. umbellata, Lam., 

 common along the seashore from Southern California to Wash- 

 ington, distinguished by rose-purple flowers and prostrate 

 stems sometimes 3 feet long. The common name Sand Ver- 

 bena may be justified by the striking superficial resemblance 

 of the flower heads to those of the true verbenas of the garden, 

 although there is no real relationship. 



There are about a dozen species of this beautiful genus 

 indigenous to the Pacific Slope. A charmingly fragrant one is 

 the Yellow Sand Verbena (A. latifolia, Esch.) found along the 

 seashore from Monterey to Vancouver. In sandy meadows 

 of the high Sierra Nevada, the handsome A. alpina, Brandegee, 

 is found with white or pink flowers. 

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