2 
THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
brilliancy which looms up like a great scarlet blanket thrown 
across the foothills. I also found a few blossoms of the American 
Colombo (Frasera speciosa), with its small purplish flowers, but 
with which I was not at all acquainted. Near the mountain riv- 
lUlet grew some greenish flowered umbrellawort {Oxyhaphns ait- 
gust if olitts) , neither pretty nor interesting. Lower down I found 
many plants of the stemless loco-weed (Oxytropis Lainberti) 
which is said to drive horses insane if eaten by them. A smooth 
beard-tongue (Pentstenion Torreyi) I think, grew here luxuri- 
antly, as also did the wild arnica which in its season literally cov- 
ers the foothills, casting over them a sheen of that gold for which 
many a poor prospector has sought in vain, and lost his life in 
consequence amid these trackless mountains. 
Another of our Ohio' flowers flourished well on the same 
foothill, and that is the verbena, which cultivation has greatly im- 
proved. This western variety is the small flowered purple, 
Verbena hipinnatiUda. A rather rare find were some prickly 
poppies, which open their great white flowers, nearly as large as a 
saucer, after the sun has passed far toward its setting. I have 
found them growing rankly upon a pile of rocks where there 
seemed positively no sustenance whatever. I think this member 
of the poppy family is probably Argemone alba, but its relative, 
the California poppy, which blooms in Gila County early and late 
and hides not its glowing face from the sun, is much more in evi- 
dence. Speaking of yellow bloom, it is perhaps too visionary to 
suggest that the hidden gold of the mountains is reflected in these 
flower faces on the surface of the earth, but nowhere did I ever see 
such profusion of yellows as cover the foothills of Arizona. Be- 
tween the flowers and the sunlight one gets literally steeped in 
glittering gold. The yellows that are the most profuse bloomers 
are the prairie zinnias {Zinnia grandiflora) , the arnicas, the mus- 
tards, the poppies, two or three varieties of yellow cacti, though 
these are more of a lemon yellow, the golden portulacas and an- 
other yellow flower, Riddellia tagetina, which looks like the gar- 
den catchfly and has, I believe, no common name. But all color 
waves have their day in this sunny region, for when it is not a 
