BUTTERCUP FAMILY. Ranunculaceae. 
Very handsome, over a foot tall, the 
Sacramento upper stem downy, the lower more or less 
ge pnes hairy and the leaves more or less velvety. 
Delphinium 5 
sariegtium The flowers are an inch or more long and 
Purple rather few, with long pedicels, forming a 
Spring, summer Joose cluster. They are downy on the 
ee outside, all bright-purple, except the two 
upper petals, which are white tipped with purple, the 
lower petals edged and tipped with hairs, the spur stoutish 
and wrinkled. These flowers, though described as blue, 
seem to me to have more true purple than most Larkspurs. 
They probably vary a good deal in color. This grows in 
the Coast Ranges and the Sacramento Valley. There are 
many similar blue Larkspurs. 
Scarlet seems an odd color for a Lark- 
Scarlet Larkspur, sur but there are two red ones in the 
Christmas-horns 
Detshinien West. This is an_ exceedingly airy, 
nudicaile graceful plant and suggests a Columbine 
Red more than a Larkspur. The stem is 
Spring 
slender and branching, from one to over 
two feet tall, with a ‘‘bloom”’; the leaves 
thickish, smooth, dark rich green on the upper side and 
pale on the under. The flowers are far apart, from two to 
twelve, on long pedicels, forming a very loose, open cluster. 
Each flower is about an inch long; the sepals scarlet 
shading to yellow, the spur tipped with deeper red, the 
petals yellow tipped with crimson, not woolly, the two 
upper notched and much larger than the two lower ones, 
which are small and slashed into two points, the edges of 
both sepals and petals more or less hairy; the buds pale 
yellowish-green, tinged with pink and red. These charm- 
ing flowers have an elfin look all their own, as they swing 
their little pointed red caps in the light shade of cool 
canyons along the mountain streams they love. In 
southern California we find D. cardindle, a handsomer 
plant, sometimes six feet tall, its flowers larger and deeper 
red and forming a larger, closer cluster. 
Wash., Oreg., Cal. 
132 
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