rigines and this plant in ancient Mexico was cultivated as 

MINT FAMILY. Labiatae. 
w 
clear bright lilac with an erect upper lip with two lobes, 
their fringed tips crossed one over the other, and the 
lower lip with small side lobes and a very large, fan-shaped, 
middle lobe, which is delicately fringed with white. The 
pistil is purple and the anthers are bright orange, which 
gives a piquant touch to the whole color scheme of pale 
green and lilac. There are several tiers of these soft yet 
prickly balls, which suggest the pale green turbans of an 
eastern potentate, wreathed with flowers. The buds 
poke their little noses through the wool, in a most fas- 
cinating way, like babies coming out of a woolly blanket, 
and fresh buds keep on coming through and expanding as 
the faded blossoms fall, so that these flowers last longer in 
water than we would expect from their fragile appearance. 
The plants when they are crushed give out a rather heavy 
smell of sage, with a dash of lemon verbena. They grow 
on the dry open plains of the South. 
This is an odd-looking plant, but is 
Chia ; : 
Sélvia columbariae Often quite handsome. The stout purplish 
Blue stem, from six inches to over two feet tall, 
Spring springs from a cluster of rough, very 
Southwest dull green leaves, sometimes so wrinkled 
as to look like the back of a toad, and bears a series of 
round, button-like heads, consisting of numerous, purple, 
bristly bracts, ornamented with small, very bright blue 
flowers. Though the flowers are small, the contrast 
between their vivid coloring and the purple or wine- 
colored bracts is very effective. The seeds have been 
for centuries an important food product among the abo- 
regularly as corn, the meal being extremely nourishing 
and resembling linseed meal. The Mission Fathers used it 
for poultices and it is still in demand among the Spanish- 
Californians. This grows on dry hillsides and smells of 
sage. 
we 
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