PLANTS GROWING IN MOIST SOIL. 109 



the upper lip two-cleft and blue ; the lower lip three-cleft and white ; the 

 middle lobe folded like a pocket and enclosing the stamens and style. 

 Stamens: four. Pistil: one. Leaves: opposite; ovate; clasping by a 

 heart-shaped base as they ascend the stem. Stem : erect ; branching. 



The name of blue-eyed Mary harmonizes well with her sweet 

 personality ; although in her bine eye there is a quiet gleam 

 that makes us fancy she is neither so meek nor so innocent as 

 she would have us believe. She is rather a stay-at-home, and 

 unless we persuade her it is to be doubted whether she will 

 ever spread herself over the moist meadows of the eastern 

 states as she does now over those of the west and south. 



MONKEY-FLOWER. 



Mimulus ringens. 



FAMILY COLOUR ODOUR RANGE TIME OF BLOOM 



Figwort. Pinkish, deep violet. Scentless. Eastern and middle states. July^ August. 



Flowers: solitary; axillary; hanging from slender peduncles. Calyx: of 

 five-toothed sepals. Corolla : tubular ; the upper lip divided into two recurved 

 lobes; the lower ones into three spreading lobes. Stamens: four. Pistil: 

 one. Leaves : opposite ; lanceolate ; sessile ; toothed. Stem : four-angled ; 

 erect ; very slender. 



Mimulus is the Latin for a little buffoon and ringens means 

 showing the teeth. Hardly a more appropriate name could 

 have been chosen for this plant, which vexes and charms us 

 simultaneously by its inanimate drollery. Its pert little face 

 has a look of intelligent mockery and its manners are very 

 bad. In the late summer, when the botanist sallies forth to 

 seek some new specimen that grows in moist soil, his eye 

 encounters the saucy face of the M. ringens. To him it is an 

 old friend ; he nods to it and passes swiftly on to pursue a 

 gleam of deep purple, too deep, he fancies, for the monkey 

 flower, that attracts him from behind a thicket. Eagerly he 

 stoops to pluck some new treasure, and the well known, grinning 

 little face peers up at him. " They are like the book agents," 

 he sighs, " I will show them that I am supplied," and he places 

 one in his buttonhole. From low grasses a patch of pale lilac 

 next causes him to turn out of his direction pictures of long- 



