


LILY FAMILY. Liliaceae. 
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. There are several kinds of Chlorogalum. 
mole ; 5 ; 
Scan Plant This odd plant springs from a big bulb, 
Chlorégalum which is covered with coarse brown fiber 
pomeridianum = and often shows above the ground. The 
Oe ne leaves are sometimes over two feet long, 
California with rippled margins, look like very coarse 
grass, and usually spread out flat on the 
ground. The plants are conspicuous and look interesting 
and we wonder what sort of flower is to come from them. 
Then some day in late summer we find that a rather ugly, 
branching stalk, four or five feet tall, has shot up from the 
center of the tuft of leaves. The branches are covered 
with bluish-green buds, and we watch with interest for 
the bloom, but we may easily miss it, for the flowers are 
very short-lived and come out only for a little while in the 
afternoons. In the lowlands the flowers are rather scat- 
tered and straggling, but in Yosemite they are lovely, 
close by. Each flower is an inch or more across and looks 
like an airy little lily, with six spreading divisions, white, 
delicately veined with dull-blue, and they are clustered 
along the branches, towards the top of the stalk, and 
bloom in successive bunches, beginning at the bottom. 
When they commence to bloom, the tips of the petals 
remain caught together until the last minute, when 
suddenly they let go and spring apart and all at once the 
dull stalk, like Aaron’s rod, is adorned with several deli- 
cate clusters of feathery silver flowers. The thread-like 
style is slightly three-cleft at the tip and the capsule has 
one or two blackish seeds in each cell. The bulbs form 
a lather in water and are used as a substitute for soap by 
the Indians and Spanish-Californians, and as food by the 
Pomo Indians, who cook them in great pits in the ground. 
Pomeridianum means ‘‘in the afternoon.” 
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