MINT FAMILY. Labiatae. 



clear bright lilac with an erect upper lip with two lobes, 

 their fringed tips crossed one over the other, and the 

 lower lip with small side lobes and a very large, fan-shaped, 

 middle lobe, which is delicately fringed with white. The 

 pistil is purple and the anthers are bright orange, which 

 gives a piquant touch to the whole color scheme of pale 

 green and lilac. There are several tiers of these soft yet 

 prickly balls, which suggest the pale green turbans of an 

 eastern potentate, wreathed with flowers. The buds 

 poke their little noses through the wool, in a most fas- 

 cinating way. like babies coming out of a woolly blanket, 

 and fresh buds keep on coming through and expanding as 

 the faded blossoms fall, so that these flowers last longer in 

 water than we would expect from their fragile appearance. 

 The plants when they are crushed give out a rather heavy 

 smell of sage, with a dash of lemon verbena. They grow 

 on the dry open plains of the South. 



This is an odd-looking plant, but is 

 Sdlvia columbtriae often q uite handsome. The stout purplish 

 Blue stem, from six inches to over two feet tall, 



Spring springs from a cluster of rough, very 



Southwest ^ ull green leaves, sometimes so wrinkled 



as to look like the back of a toad, and bears a series of 

 round, button-like heads, consisting of numerous, purple, 

 bristly bracts, ornamented with small, very bright blue 

 flowers. Though the flowers are small, the contrast 

 between their vivid coloring and the purple or wine- 

 colored bracts is very effective. The seeds have been 

 for centuries an important food product among the abo- 

 rigines and this plant in ancient Mexico was cultivated as 

 regularly as corn, the meal being extremely nourishing 

 and resembling linseed meal. The Mission Fathers used it 

 for poultices and it is still in demand among the Spanish- 

 Californians. This grows on dry hillsides and smells of 

 sage. 



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