LOBELIA FAMILY 



(Lobeliaceoe) 



Herbs with milky juice, alternate leaves, and irregular flow- 

 ers, apparently 2-lipped; stamens 5, united into a tube by 

 their filaments or the anthers cohering into a ring about the 

 top of the style, which is single and surmounted by a usually 

 2-lobed stigma encircled with hairs. (A family united by some 

 botanists with Campanulacese, into which it seems to pass.) 



WESTERN CARDINAL FLOWER (Lobelia splendens, Willd.). 

 Flowers flaming red, 2-lipped; the corolla tube about an inch 

 long, split down the upper side, the lower lip 3-parted and 

 spreading, the upper 2-cleft and erect; borne in showy, wand- 

 like racemes at the summit of slender, smoothish stems 2 to 4 

 feet high. Leaves without petioles, lance-shaped to linear, 

 with gland-tipped teeth. Blooming in summer and early 

 autumn in wet grounds, Southern California eastward to Ari- 

 zona and New Mexico, thence south to Mexico. 



This glorious flower is so nearly a duplicate of the well- 

 known Eastern Cardinal Flower, that one knowing the latter 

 easily recognizes this. It is slenderer and smoother than the 

 Eastern, and the leaves narrower. 

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