BUTTERCUP FAMILY. Ranunculaceae. 
closely back. The akenes have hooked beaks. This runs 
into many scarcely distinguishable varieties. 
Few flowers are more beautiful and interesting in color 
and construction than Larkspurs. We are all familiar 
with their tall spires of oddly-shaped blossoms, growing in 
gardens, and we find them even more charming in their 
natural surroundings, glowing like sapphires on desert 
sands, or adorning mountain woods with patches of vivid 
color. There are many kinds; ours are perennials, with 
palmately-divided leaves and usually blue or white flowers, 
very irregular in form, with five sepals, resembling petals, 
the upper one prolonged into a spur at the back, and 
usually four petals, two of which are small and inside the 
‘ calyx-spur, the larger two partly covering the pistils and 
the numerous stamens. The pistils, from one to five, be- 
come many-seeded pods. Some Larkspurs are poisonous 
to cattle. The Latin name is from a fancied resemblance 
of the flower to the dolphin of decorative art. Spanish 
Californians call it Espuela del caballero, Cavalier’s spur. 
Though sometimes rather small, this is 
Blue Lark 
va _ extremely pretty. In the Grand Canyon, 
Delphinium ie a 
scaposum on the plateau, it is about a foot .2ll, with 
Blue rather leathery, brownish-green leaves, 
Summer 
mostly from the root, and from five to 
twelve flowers ina cluster. They measure 
nearly an inch across and are brilliant and iridescent in 
coloring, as except for two small whitish petals, they are the 
deepest, brightest blue, exquisitely tinted with violet, with 
brown anthers. At Tucson, among the rocks above the 
Desert Laboratory, it grows to over a foot in height, with a 
cluster over six inches long and light dull-green leaves, 
slightly stiff and thick, with long leaf-stalks, the lobes 
tipped with a bristle, forming a handsome clump. This 
grows on dry plains and rocky hillsides, up to seven thou- 
sand feet. The picture is from a Grand Canyon plant. 
If the flowers were a little less pale in 
Larkspur 2 
Dal phinvam color this would be a gorgeous plant, for 
Hanseni it sometimes grows nearly four feet high. 
White, pinkish The branching stem springs from a 
a cluster of thick, tapering roots, each 
California : ; : 
branch terminating in a long, crowded 
cluster of twenty or thirty flowers, opalescent in tint, 
128 
Ariz., New Mex. 
