Wp a ee - 

SHOOTING STAR 
(Dodecatheon Clevelandi) 
February usually finds this charming member of the prim- 
rose family in bloom in the meadows and on grassy slopes where 
it lingers usually until well into May. 
Few California wild flowers are more beloved than this, as 
is attested by the numerous names which popular fancy has 
attached to it. Thus, besides Shooting Star it is call T'welve 
Gods, Wild Cyclamen, Mad Violet, Mosquito Bill, Prairie 
Pointer, etc. 
Children, the world over, have a propensity to gather 
certain flowers and fight them against one another in mock 
battles, and in California the Shooting Star generally plays this 
role. The flowers are hooked together and then violently pulled 
apart, when off goes one head or the other. Hence another 
common name for the flower—<<Rooster Head.”’ 
SCARLET BUGLER 
(Penstemon centranthifolius) 
This showy flower is probably most abundant in the moun- 
tains. From February to June or even later the vivid red blooms, 
arranged in loose spires sometimes two feet in length, gleam out 
from amid the scrub of the hillsides like a myriad darting 
sparkles of flame. 
The slender, tubular corollas, suggesting in shape so many 
bugles, are not unlike the trumpets of the coral honeysuckle that 
clambers about old-fashioned country porches in the East. In 
consequence, the California flower is not infrequently called 
honeysuckle, though incorrectly, as it belongs to quite another 
family—that of the snapdragon. 
If 

