100 
PLANTS OF YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK 
Douglasia montana usually bears a single purple or lilac flower 
on each peduncle. 
GENTIAN FAMILY (GENTIANACEAE) 
The gentian family is made up of smooth herbs with opposite or 
whorled leaves and perfect, regular flowers, gome of which are 
extremely beautiful. The calyx 
more or less toothed or lobed, 
and the stamens are on the 
tube of the corolla. There 
is one pistil with a single 
style and usually a two-lobed 
stigma. 
and corolla are both tubular and 
Figure 76. —Rocky Mountain fringed 
gentian. Blue. Copyright, J. E. 
Haynes. 
Figure 77.—Gentian. Blue. Copyright, 
J. E. Haynes. 
Rocky Mountain fringed gentian (Gentiana elegans )In 1926 the 
fringed gentian was chosen as the park flower. It was an excellent 
choice, not only because it is considered one of the most beautiful 
of all the park flowers, but because it blooms throughout the entire 
tourist season. It is found blooming at the beginning of the tourist 
season in June on the warm earth of the geyser basins, and it is still 
in bloom in some of the more protected places in the park when the 
last tourists leave in late September. It grows 8 to 12 inches high 
and each of the several unbranched stems is terminated by a single 
flower. Each stem also bears 3 to 6 pairs of leaves, the lower with 
petioles and the upper sessile. The corolla is about 2 inches long 
