BORAGE FAMILY. Boraginaceae. 
This has bright flowers, but the foliage 
Saccato Gordo, i; dreadfully harsh. The stem is from one 
Fiddle-neck, ‘ 3 
Buckthorn Weed ‘© three feet tall, often widely branching, 
Amsinckia with white bristles scattered over it, and 
inlermédia the leaves are dull green and bristly. 
mela. The flowers are pretty, about half an inch 
Spring, summer E : 
West long, with narrow sepals and bright 
orange corollas, with five bright red spots 
between the lobes. The nutlets are roughened with short, 
hard points. These plants are very common and some- 
times form rank thickets in fields and waste places. They 
‘are very abundant in southern Arizona and are valued as a 
grazing plant for stock and are therefore known as Saccato 
Gordo, which means ‘“‘fat grass.” 
There are many kinds of Cryptanthe, most of them 
western and difficult to distinguish. They are slender, 
hairy plants, with small flowers, which are usually white, in 
coiled clusters; the calyx bristly; the corolla funnel-form, 
usually with five crests closing the throat; the nutlets 
never wrinkled. These plants resemble white Forget-me- 
nots and are sometimes so called. The Greek name means 
“hidden flower,” perhaps because of the minute flowers of 
some kinds. 
A rather attractive little plant, but in- 
Nievitas é h : 
Crypténthe conspicuous except when it grows in 
intermedia patches, when it powders the fields with 
White _ white, like a light fall of snow, and suggests 
ae the pretty Spanish name, which is a 
diminutive of ‘‘nieve,’”’ or snow. The 
slender, roughish stem is about ten inches tall, the light 
green leaves are hairy, with fine bristles along the edges, 
and the pretty little flowers are white, about a quarter of 
an inch across, with yellow crests in the throat. Pop- 
corn Flower, Plagiobothrys nothofulvus, of the Northwest, 
is also called Nievitas, as it often whitens the ground 
with its small, fragrant, white flowers, which are very much 
like the last. 
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