THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 
Vol. 11. January 15, 1902. No.' i 
ARIZONA FLOWER FOLK. 
By a. a. Field. 
An interesting section for exploration, particularly to one 
interested in plant life, is the territory north of the Santa Fe Rail- 
road, where it runs through Arizona. Crossing the foothills of 
the Pinal mountains one is at an elevation of from six to seven 
thousand feet, yet here one runs across a world of interesting 
bloom, though many of the flowers are the same as those we find 
in the Eastern gardens. However, there is enough of unusual 
varieties to make a botanical research interesting technically and 
artistically. 
There is a marked gregariousness among the flowers as well 
as among the birds of this section, almost all sorts and conditions 
growing in colonies as it were. It was in one of the cool nooks 
bordering a refreshing mountain stream that I chanced upon a 
little gathering of columbines, the rarer variety Aqitilegia flavi- 
f'cra which we sometimes see in gardens. It is by far the hand- 
.somest and most luxuriant member of the family with its rich 
yellow bloom, though the old legend of the doves drinking from a 
nectarie of sweets, which some thought this flower resembled, 
would in this flower have to change its feathered representatives 
to swans, so slender and long are its graceful spurred petals. 
Here, too, one runs across a member of the hair-bell family, gen- 
erally Cainpaniila rotundifolia, much lighter in color than in 
Montana and the cooler regions where its rank growth makes the 
way almost impassible, and when in bloom the earth rivals the 
deepest of summer skies in rich color, and one seems to literally 
walk in heavenly blues. A bit lower dow^n on one of the mesas 
blooms worlds of the scarlet gilia {Gilia aftenuata), the flowers of 
^which greatly resemble the tree cypress, and one is dazzled by its 
