LILY FAMILY. Liliaceac. 



. There are several kinds of Chlorogalum. 



Soap Plant This dd plant springs from a big bulb, 



Chlordgalum which is covered with coarse brown fiber 



pomeridi&num and often shows above the ground. The 



very-w te leaves are sometimes over two feet long, 

 Summer 

 California with rippled margins, look like very coarse 



grass, and usually spread out flat on the 

 ground. The plants are conspicuous and look interesting 

 and we wonder what sort of flower is to come from them. 

 Then some day in late summer we find that a rather ugly, 

 branching stalk, four or five feet tall, has shot up from the 

 center of the tuft of leaves. The branches are covered 

 with bluish-green buds, and we watch with interest for 

 the bloom, but we may easily miss it, for the flowers are 

 very short-lived and come out only for a little while in the 

 afternoons. In the lowlands the flowers are rather scat- 

 tered and straggling, but in Yosemite they are lovely, 

 close by. Each flower is an inch or more across and looks 

 like an airy little lily, with six spreading divisions, white, 

 delicately veined with dull-blue, and they are clustered 

 along the branches, towards the top of the stalk, and 

 bloom in successive bunches, beginning at the bottom. 

 When they commence to bloom, the tips of the petals 

 remain caught together until the last minute, when 

 suddenly they let go and spring apart and all at once the 

 dull stalk, like Aaron's rod, is adorned with several deli- 

 cate clusters of feathery silver flowers. The thread-like 

 style is slightly three-cleft at the tip and the capsule has 

 one or two blackish seeds in each cell. The bulbs form 

 a lather in water and are used as a substitute for soap by 

 the Indians and Spanish-Calif ornians, and as food by the 

 Porno Indians, who cook them in great pits in the ground. 

 Pomeridianum means "in the afternoon. " 



12 



