BUTTERCUP FAMILY, Ranunculaceae. 
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There are many varieties of Clematis, or Virgin’s Bower, 
familiar to us all, both East and West, and general favorites, 
widely distributed and flourishing in temperate regions; 
perennials, woody below, which is unusual in this family. 
Usually they are beautiful trailing vines, which climb over 
bushes and rocks, holding on by their twisting, curling 
leaf-stalks. The flowers have no petals, or only very 
small ones, but their sepals, usually four, resemble petals; 
the stamens are numerous. The numerous pistils form a 
round bunch of akenes, their styles developing into long 
feathery tails, and these gray, plumy heads are very 
conspicuous and ornamental, when the flowers are gone. 
The leaves are opposite, which is unusual in this family, 
with slender leaf-stalks, and are usually compound. Some 
plants have only staminate flowers and some only pistillate 
ones, and the appearance is quite different, the flowers with 
stamens being handscmer. 
Near the summit of Mt. Lowe, and in 
Virgin’s Bower, similar places, we find this beautiful vine 
Pipe-stem : 
a aes clambering over the rocks. The flowers 
lasidntha measure an inch and a quarter to over two 
White, pale- inches across and they vary in tint from 
ae almost pure white to a lovely soft shade of 
Spring 
California pale-ycllow, the handsome clusters form- 
ing a beautiful contrast to the dark-green 
foliage. The stamens and pistils are on different plants. 
The flowers, leaves, and stems are all more or less velvety 
and the akenes have tails an inch long, forming a head, 
about two inches across. The flowers are often so numer- 
ous as to make conspicuous masses of pale color on canyon 
sides, in the Coast Range and Sierra Nevada Mountains. 
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