FIG WORT FAMILY. Scrophulariaceae. 



_.. __ These are charming plants, from six 



Chinese Houses . 



CoUinsia bicolor inches to a foot and a half tall, with very 

 Purple and white delicately made flowers. The leaves are 

 Spring, summer smooth or downy and more or less toothed, 

 i orma with rough edges, and the flowers are 



arranged in a series of one-sided clusters along the upper 

 part of the stem, which is more or less branching. The 

 corollas are about three-quarters of an inch long and vary 

 in color, being sometimes all white. In the shady woods 

 around Santa Barbara they often have a white upper lip, 

 which is tipped with lilac and specked with crimson, and a 

 lilac lower lip, and here they are much more delicate in 

 appearance than on the sea-cliffs at La Jolla, where they 

 grow in quantities among the bushes and are exceedingly 

 showy. In the latter neighborhood the flowers are nearly 

 an inch long and the upper lip is almost all white and 

 marked with a crescent of crimson specks above a magenta 

 base, and the lower lip is almost all magenta, with a white 

 stripe at the center, the contrast between the magenta 

 and white being very striking and almost too crude. The 

 arrangement of the flowers is somewhat suggestive of the 

 many stories of a Chinese pagoda and the plant is common. 



A very attractive little plant, smooth 

 Blue-lips a]] Qv about six inches tall with tooth . 



CoUinsia 



muitiflora less 1] g nt g reen leaves and pretty flowers, 



Lilac, blue, and each over half an inch long. The upper 



P ink petals are pinkish-lilac, the lower petals a 



um er peculiar shade of bright blue, and the 



tube is pink; the contrast between the 



blue and pink giving an odd and pretty effect. This grows 



in the woods around Mt. Shasta. 



There are many kinds of Scrophularia, most of them 

 natives of Europe. They are rank perennial herbs, usually 

 with opposite leaves; the corolla with no spur and with 

 five lobes, all erect except the lowest one, which is small 

 and turned back; the stamens five, four of them with 

 anthers and the fifth reduced to a scale under the upper 

 lip. These plants are supposed to be a remedy for scrofula, 



488 



