OENTIAN FAMILY. Gentianacese. 



lobes of the corolla (rarely they are appreciably shorter). 

 The style is about half-cleft. 1-2 feet high. Marshes, 

 Nantucket, Mass. to N. J. , south to Fla. and La. 



The largest-flowered and most beautiful 

 pjj^. member of the genus. The basal leaves 



Sabbat in blunt-tipped and tapering toward the base, 



vhJoroides the upper light green leaves diminishing 



Crimson^pink ^^ lance-shape and linear. The few crim- 

 July-August • 1 r, 1^-1 



son-pmk nowers are nearly two inches 



broad, with generally ten obovate corolla lobes (an equal 

 number of linear calyx, lobes), each marked with a 

 three-pointed ochre-edged, green-yellow base which 

 contributes to the beauty of the central star- figure of 

 the flower ; the stamens are golden yellow, and the style 

 is deeply two-cleft. The flower is visited most fre- 

 quently by bees and the flies of the genus Syrphidce. 

 The wiry stems, simple or branching very little, are 1-2 

 feet high. Rarely the flowers are white. On sandy 

 margins of brackish ponds from Mass. to Fla. and Ala. , 

 near the coast. 



Fringed The most famous member of the beauti- 



Gentian ful Gentian group, remarkable not so 



Gentiana much for its blue color as for the delicate. 



Pale violet= misty quality of that color, and the ex- 

 biue pressiveness of the flower-form. The 



September- plant is an annual with a leafy, perpen- 

 October dicular, branched stem, the branches erect, 



somewhat four-angled, and each bearing a single ter- 

 minal flower. The flower is deep vase-shaped with four 

 rounded, light violet-blue lobes deeply fringed and 

 spreading horizontally only in the sunshine ; the color 

 varies from pale to deep violet-blue, with occasionally a 

 ruddy tinge, but never with a suspicion of true blue, 

 though lines of a deeper blue- violet appear on the outer 

 surface of the corolla. The large four-pointed calyx is 

 four-sided, and generally a bronzy, yellow-green. The 

 yellow-green leaves are ovate-lance-shaped or narrower, 

 and they are conspicuouslj^ opposite. 1-3 feet high. In 

 low moist ground from Me. to the Daks. , south to Iowa, 

 and in the mountains of Ga. 



356 



