BLEEDING HEART (Dicentra formosa, DC.). Flowers 

 magenta or pink, or occasionally whitish, about f inch long, 

 nodding, in panicles terminating succulent stems a foot or 

 two high. Leaves basal, pale green, compound, cut-lobed. 

 Found in rich, damy, woodlands of the Coast Range and low 

 altitudes of the Si^fra Nevada, from Central California (in- 

 cluding the Yosemite region) northward to British Columbia, 

 blooming in suminer. 



This charming flower is easy of recognition from its general 

 resemblance to the other Bleeding Heart of old gardens, which 

 is an Asiatic cousin known to botanists as Dicentra spectabilis. 

 Our species, too, has been introduced into cultivation and is 

 by no means averse to the "cakes and ale" of civilized life. 

 In fact, of the 14 or 15 known species of Dicentras, natives of 

 North America, western Asia, and the Himalayas, at least 

 half a dozen have become more or less known as garden plants, 

 especially in Europe, because of their striking beauty and ease 

 of culture. 



Latter-day botanists with a taste for upsetting established 

 nomenclature discard the name Dicentra for their genus, and 

 prefer Bicuctdla, under which name students will have to look 

 for it in some books. 



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