22 Tennessee Flora. 



flowed bear beautiful or curiously-shaped flowers, but the unsightly 

 smilax threatens with his thorns the vexed explorer. 



Several plants held for exclusively Western have lately been 

 observed around Nashville. The Solanum rostratum — from the 

 tribe of the Irish potato — with golden flowers, foliage like the- 

 watermelon, elegant looking, but unapproachable from the prickles 

 and thorns with which it is beset all over, is such an intruder, and 

 a very undesirable one, being an inexterminable, all-spreading weed; 

 Oenothera triloba, a dwarfish evening primrose, not more than a 

 span high, with large yellow flower, a common plant on the plains ; 

 and some other less conspicuous weeds. Where the soil thins out,, 

 leaving here and there the rock exposed, or where from the collapse- 

 of subterranean cavities the strata are tumliled about in confusion 

 and earth and humus irregularly distributed, there the heavier- 

 timber growth gives out, and the cedar is the predominant growth. 

 Its far-searching roots descend into the crevices and cavities of the- 

 age-worn rock. The somber tint of the cedar delineates a cedar 

 barren from its surroundings at a distance, and serves within its 

 environs to bring out with dazzling vividness the beautiful green- 

 of the glade grass, aglow with rose-colored petalestemons, sky-blue- 

 lobelias, golden Leavenworthias, Schoenoliriums and shrubby hy- 

 pericums. The pink stonecrop, Sedum pulcliellum, covers acres of 

 surface, yielding again to equal profusion of the delicate white 

 Arenaria ( Arena ria patula), or a low, purple-flowered skullcap 

 (Scutellaria nervosa). The Talinum, teretifolium, span high, with 

 fleshy leaves like a portulaca, the flower resembling the bloom of 

 a phlox, but of the purest carmine, finds room for its tuberous root- 

 lets in the smallest fissures. It will liear transplanting even while- 

 flowering, and grows well in the garden. Cream-colored and blue- 

 astragals (Astragalus Plattensis and Astragalus caryoca.rpus) , and 

 a purple, large-flowered, and prostrate psoralea (Psoralea suha- 

 caulis), phacelias, the blue false indigo (Baptisia australis),. 

 bluets, and the Carolina anemone (Hovstonia patens. Anemone 

 Caroliniana), verbenas, violets (especially the pansylike Viola 

 pedata var, bicolor), the dwarf heliotrope (Heliotropium tenellum)^ 

 the pale purple Phlox Stellaria (which deserves a bed in every gar- 

 den), and many, many more assemble — a natural conservatory that 

 could fearlessly challenge any flower garden in the combined effect 

 of gayety and luxuriance. For truth, my honored Tennessee 

 friends, go and see, and learn to appreciate and to preserve such 



