California Trees and Flowers. 147 



OENOTHERA. 



An almost exclusively American genus of over one hundred 

 species, many with showy flowers, and some long in cultivation as 

 ornamental. 



GE. biennis L. The Evening primrose, with its large showy 

 flowers, is too well known to need description. 



CE. bistort a Nutt. Showy yellow flowers, usually with a dark 

 brown spot at base of each petal. A low decumbent annual, the 

 variety Veitchiana being the form commonly seen in cultivation. 



CE. californica Watson. Low flowers, large white, becoming 

 pinkish, fragrant. One of the loveliest and most delicate of flowers, 

 often two or three inches across. 



ORTHOCARPUS. 



A large genus of low, branching annuals, nearly related to 

 Castilleia. 



O. purpurasceus Benth. An erect, diffusely branched annual, a 

 span to a foot high, producing numerous dense and thick terminal 

 oblong or cylindrical spikes of flowers. Corolla yellowish, tipped 

 with crimson or red and the whole encircled by the brilliantly 

 colored crimson-purple or rose-purple floral bracts. Hundreds of 

 acres are often transformed into brilliant fields of purple by the 

 abundance of this, one of the handsomest of the spring annuals of 

 California. 



PAPAVER. 



P. Californica. Gray. While one of the latest discoveries, this 

 plant ranks among the prettiest of our annuals, the fine bushy plant, 

 a foot or more high, bearing large showy flowers of an average of 

 two inches in diameter. The color is a bright saturn red to orange 

 chrome, with a center of delicate sulphur yellow. 



PENTACHAETA. 



P. aitrea Nutt. This small hardy annual, with its large golden 

 yellow heads of almost double flowers, introduced into cultivation in 

 1884, is a pretty dwarf composite that may be readily grown. 



PENTSTEMON. 



Hardy perennial plants with showy panicles of brilliantly col- 

 ored flowers. Several of the numerous California species have long 

 been in cultivation. 



P. centranthifolius Benth. A showy species, two or three feet 

 high, bearing long slender spikes of bright carmine-colored flowers, 

 an inch long. Acres in extent of our mountain lands are sometimes 

 a solid mass of carmine during the summer, when this handsome 

 plant is in bloom. It was introduced in 1858. 



