
BUCKWHEAT FAMILY, Poly gonaceae. 
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There are many kinds of Eriogonum, herbs or shrubs, 
natives of America, mostly western, growing in dry places, 
very numerous and difficult to distinguish. The leaves, 
without sheaths or stipules, are often covered with white 
down and usually grow in a spreading cluster at the base of 
the stem. The numerous small flowers, on very slender 
little pedicels, have six sepals, thin in texture and usually 
colored, and form clusters of various shapes, which emerge 
from more or less bell-shaped or top-shaped involucres, 
with six teeth. There are nine stamens, with threadlike 
filaments, often hairy, and a three-parted style with round- 
top stigmas. The name is from the Greek meaning 
‘wooly knees,”’ in allusion to the wooly joints of the stem. 
This is a most extraordinary looking 
pilot se plant, with queer inflated, hollow stalks, 
inflatum about two feet high, swelling larger to- 
Yellow wards the top, and the branches, which 
Sane are also swollen, sticking out awkwardly 
Southwest 
in all directions and bearing a few minute, 
yellow flowers. The stalks, which are pale bluish-green, 
suggest some strange sort of reed, but the dark-green 
leaves, growing in a rosette at the base, are something like 
the leaves of cultivated violets and seem entirely out of 
keeping with the rest of the plant. This grows on the 
plateau in the Grand Canyon and in similar places. 
This is about a foot and a half tall and 
Swollen-stalk p 
the stem is swollen, but not so much so as 
Eriégonum eldtum 
White, pink the last, and the flowers are more con- 
Summer spicuous, forming rather flat-topped clus- 
Northwest 
ters, about three-quarters of an inch 
across. The tiny flowers are cream-white or pinkish, the 
buds are deep-pink, and the stamens are long, with tiny, 
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