LARGE-FLOWERED PHACELIA (Phacelia grandiflora, Gray). 

 Flowers saucer-shaped and showy, from 1 to 2 inches in diam- 

 eter, lavender or white, more or less veined with purple, in 

 loose racemes. Leaves ovate tending to heart-shape at the 

 base, 2 or 3 inches long, coarsely toothed. A robust, coarse 

 plant 1 to 3 feet high, clothed with sticky hairs, and in con- 

 sequence disagreeable to handle, communicating a reddish- 

 brown stain to whatever it touches. Blooming in early 

 summer on dry hillsides of Southern California. 



The genus Phacelia, as at present understood, is a very 

 numerous one, being a consolidation of some half-dozen genera 

 that old-time botanists treated as separate. Cf the 80 or so 

 established species all are New World plants, and about 50 

 are indigenous to our Pacific Slope. The name is founded 

 on a Greek word meaning "fascicle or cluster," an allusion to 

 the densely crowded flower spikes of the first described species, 

 P. circinata, Jacq. f., collected a century and a quarter ago 

 in the Straits of Magellan a species common also in Cali- 

 fornia, and remarkable for its extended ranre. 



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