484 THE BELLFLOWER FAMILY. 



straight; divided to the base on one side. Two-lipped, the lobes at each side of 

 the opening erect, recurved, the lower three ovate. Stamens : five, their fila- 

 ments united into a tube. Pistil: one; stigma, two-lobed and having about it a 

 ring of hairs. Leaves : oblong, or oblong-lanceolate, the lower ones petioled, the 

 upper ones nearly sessile; dentate; thin. Stem: erect; two to four feet high, 

 nearly smooth. 



One day a young boy who had found in a swamp this beautiful lobelia 

 told me with the mysterious air of great discovery that it was " just like a 

 red flower" he knew, "only blue." Evidently he meant the cardinal lo- 

 belia, and his eye had been caught by the slit in the corolla and by other 

 similarities of construction. The genus is certainly one readily recognised 

 and very lovely in the summer and early autumn. Sometimes through the 

 same swamp a number of them will be found not far distant from each 

 other— the southern lobelia with its corolla intensely blue, a chaste and 

 beautiful flower ; the little, pale, spiked one of azure colour ; the great, 

 flaming cardinal one ; and, taller than all, the great lobelia. It is then 

 most interesting to regard them separately. 



L. syphilitica, great lobelia or blue cardinal-flower, lingers in bloom until 

 late in October and sometimes attains in the south astonishing height and 

 proportions. Twice I measured stalks of it over four feet tall. They grew 

 by a brook's side in the high mountains of western North Carolina, were 

 abundantly leafy and would have been coarse-looking had they not been 

 redeemed by the very numerous pale-blue, though bright, flowers. The 

 stout stem is pubescent, and the calyx hairy, while its sinuses show large 

 deflexed appendages. 



L. piibcriila, downy lobelia, a species of sandy, moist soil, is all over 

 finely puberulent and often slightly sticky to the touch. It is smaller and 

 much more slender and delicate-looking than the great lobelia, and it bears 

 its sprightly blue flowers in a spike-like leafy raceme. Its obovate or ob- 

 long leaves, moreover, are quite thick. 



L.glatidulosa, glandular lobelia {Plate CLX), which we found abun- 

 dantly in bloom in early October through the sandy soil of Florida and 

 Georgia, even outlining the way of trolley-cars over flat country, bears but 

 few, rather delicate-looking flowers in its raceme-like spike, and the simple 

 nearly naked stem is also but sparingly leaf3^ Those leaves that do occur 

 are linear-lanceolate or linear and glandular-dentate about their margins. 

 The plant is seldom seen further northward than southern Virginia. 



L. cardinalis, cardinal-flower, red lobelia, is a wild flower about which the 

 nation might feel a righteous pride, so intensely coloured and velvety in 

 texture are its flowers, defying the artist's pigments to imitate them, and 

 forming against their background of dark green and lustrous leaves a wild 

 bit of colour almost without equal. Happily the plant is well known and its 



