BABY-BLUE-EYES. CALIFORNIAN BLUEBELLS. MARIANAS.
Nemophila insignis, Dougl. Baby-eyes or Waterleaf Family.
Tender, more or less hairy herbs. Stems.—Branching; six to twelve inches long. Leaves.—Pinnately parted into five to nine small, oblong, entire or two- to five-lobed divisions. Calyx.—Five-parted, with five extra, alternating, reflexed lobes. Corolla.—An inch or more across; from azure-blue, with a large, well-defined white center, more or less dotted, to deep blue. The throat furnished with ten short, wide, hairy scales, or plates. Stamens.—Five; on the corolla. Ovary.—One-celled. Style two-cleft. Hab.—Throughout California.
When skies are smiling and the earth is already clothed with a luxuriant and tender herbage, we find upon some balmy morning that the baby-eyes have opened in gentle surprise upon the lovely world. The spring breezes blow over no more beautiful and ethereal flowers than these. Companies of them open together, dotting the sward and luring us on from one to another, the one just beyond always seeming a little brighter blue or a little more captivating than those near at hand, till we are beguiled into filling our hands with them.
These delicate blossoms vary greatly in size and color. The largest and finest I ever saw grew upon the flower-sprinkled slopes of Lake Merced, near San Francisco. There the perfect azure corollas were an inch and a half across, with the large white circle in the center well defined.
Under southern skies it becomes a deep Yale blue, with the texture of tissue-paper, and with dark red-brown anthers.
From the campanulate, half-opened buds, it has been called "Californian bluebell," and among the Spanish-Californians it is known as "Mariana."
![[BABY-BLUE-EYES—Nemophila insignis.]](#3624944100741987669_f111.png.id-9153235451825727433.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}