
PLANTS GROWING IN MOIST SOIL. 109 
the upper lip two-cleft and blue; the lower lip three-cleft and white; the 
middle lobe folded like a pocket and enclosing the stamens and style. 
Stamens: four. Pistid: one. Leaves: opposite; ovate; clasping by a 
heart-shaped base as they ascend the stem. Sv¢em.: erect; branching. 
The name of blue-eyed Mary harmonizes well with her sweet 
personality ; although in her blue eye there isa quiet gleam 
that makes us fancy she is neither so meek nor so innocent as 
she would have us believe. Sheis rather a stay-at-home, and 
unless we persuade her it is to be doubted whether she will 
ever spread herself over the moist meadows of the eastern 
states as she does now over those of the west and south, 
MONKEY-FLOWER. 
Mimulus ringens. 
FAMILY COLOUR ODOUR RANGE TIME OF BLOOM 
Figwort. Pinkish, deep violet. Scentless. Easternand middle states. July, August. 
Flowers: solitary; axillary; hanging from slender peduncles. Calyx: of 
five-toothed sepals. Covol/a: tubular; the upper lip divided into two recurved 
lobes ; the lower ones into three spreading lobes. Stamens: four. Pistil: 
one. Leaves: opposite ; lanceolate; sessile; toothed. Stem: four-angled ; 
erect; very slender. 
Mimulus is the Latin for a little buffoon and vzngens means 
showing the teeth. Hardly a more appropriate name could 
have been chosen for this plant, which vexes and charms us 
simultaneously by its inanimate drollery. Its pert little face 
has a look of intelligent mockery and its manners are very 
bad. Inthe late summer, when the botanist sallies forth to 
seek some new specimen that grows in moist soil, his eye 
encounters the saucy face of the M.ringens. To him it is an 
old friend ; he nods to it and passes swiftly on to pursue a 
gleam of deep purple, too deep, he fancies, for the monkey 
flower, that attracts him from behind a thicket. Eagerly he 
stoops to pluck some new treasure, and the well known, grinning 
little face peers upat him. ‘“ They are like the book agents,” 
he sighs, ‘‘I will show them that I am supplied,” and he places 
one in his buttonhole. From low grasses a patch of pale lilac 
next causes him to turn out of his direction—pictures of long- 
