FOUQUIERA FAMILY. Fouquieriaceae. 



and forms close mats of foliage, sprinkled with light- 

 orange or salmon-colored flowers, a quarter of an inch 

 or more across, with fifteen to twenty, yellow stamens. 

 The effect is something like Anagallis, Scarlet Pimpernel, 

 hence the name. This is common in Yosemite and similar 

 places, up to nine thousand feet. 



FOUQUIERA FAMILY. Fouquieriaceae. 



A very small family, with one genus and only a few 

 species; natives of the Southwest and Mexico; the flowers 

 are brilliant red, in terminal clusters; the sepals five, not 

 united; the petals five, united into a tube, the lobes some- 

 what spreading; the stamens ten to fifteen, protruding, 

 inserted under the pistil; the ovary imperfectly three- 

 celled; the styles three, long, somewhat united; the seeds 

 three to six, oblong, flattened, surrounded by a mem- 

 branous wing or long, white hairs. These plants are very 

 puzzling, but interesting, and as they are not nearly related 

 they have at various times been classified with other 

 families. 



A magnificent desert shrub, when in 

 Flaming Sword, f u u bloom, but strangely forbidding in 



Flower ' CandlC aSpGCt in Spite f itS beaut y- Its man y 



Fouquttra st ^ stems, from six to twenty feet tall, 



spUndens entirely without branches, stand up stiffly 



Red from the root, like a bunch of wands, and 



Spring are arme( } their whole length with terrible 

 Ariz., Cal., New 



Mex> thorns, which in the spring are masked 



with beautiful foliage, like little apple 

 leaves. From the tip of each wand springs a glorious 

 cluster, from six to ten inches long, composed of hundreds 

 of scarlet flowers, each about an inch long, and crowded 

 closely together, suggesting a flame and waving to and 

 fro in the wind with a startling effect against the pale 

 desert sand. When the flowers and leaves are gone, the 

 clumps of dry, thorny sticks look quite dead and it is hard 

 to believe that they were so splendid early in the season. 

 They make an impenetrable fence and are much used by 

 the Indians for hedges. 



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