BLUE AND PURPLE 



CLOSED GENTIAN. 



Gentiana Andreivsii. Gentian Family. 



Stem. One to two feet high, upright, smooth. Leaves. Opposite, nar- 

 rowly oval or lance-shaped. Flowers. Blue to purple, clustered at the sum- 

 mit of the stem and often in the axils of the leaves. Calyx. Four or 

 five-cleft. Corolla. Closed at the mouth, large, oblong. Stamens. Four 

 or five. Pistil. One, with two stigmas. 



Few flowers adapt themselves better to the season than the 

 closed gentian. We look for it in September when the early 

 waning days and frost-suggestive nights prove so discouraging to 

 the greater part of the floral world. Then in somewhat moist, 

 shaded places along the roadside we find this vigorous, autumnal- 

 looking plant, with stout stems, leaves that bronze as the days 

 advance, and deep-tinted flowers firmly closed as though to 

 protect the delicate reproductive organs within from the sharp 

 touches of the late year. 



To me the closed gentian usually shows a deep blue or even 

 purple countenance, although like the fringed gentian and so 

 many other flowers its color is lighter in the shade than in the 

 sunlight. But Thoreau claims for it a " transcendent blue," " a 

 splendid blue, light in the shade, turning to purple with age." 

 " Bluer than the bluest sky, they lurk in the moist and shady 

 recesses of the banks," he writes. Mr. Burroughs also finds it 

 " intensely blue." 



FIVE-FLOWERED GENTIAN. 



Gentiana quinqueflora. Gentian Family. 



Stem. Slender, branching, one or two feet high. Leaves. Opposite, 

 ovate, lance-shaped, partly clasping. Flowers. Pale blue, smaller than 

 those of the closed gentian, in clusters of about five at the summit of stems 

 and branches. Calyx. Four or five-cleft, small. Corolla. Funnel-form, 

 four or five-lobed', its lobes bristle-pointed. Stamens. Four or five. Pis- 

 til. One, with two stigmas. 



Although the five-flowered gentian is far less frequently en- 

 countered than the closed gentian, it is very common in certain 

 localities. Gray assigns it to "moist hills" and "along the 

 mountains to Florida." I have found it growing in great abun- 

 dance on the Shawangunk Mountains in Orange County, N. Y. , 

 where it flowers in September. 



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