EVENING SNOW.
Gilia dichotoma, Benth. Phlox or Polemonium Family.
Six inches to a foot high; erect; sparsely leaved. Leaves.—Opposite; mostly entire; filiform. Flowers.—Nearly sessile in the forks, or terminal. Calyx.—With cylindric tube five lines long; wholly white, scarious, except the five filiform green ribs, continued into needle-like lobes. Corolla.—White; an inch or two across. Anthers linear. Hab.—Throughout the western part of the State.
This is one of the most showy of our gilias. Miss Eastwood writes of it: "At about four o'clock in the afternoon Gilia dichotoma begins to whiten the hillside. Before expansion the flowers are hardly noticeable; the dull pink of the edges, which are not covered in the convolute corolla, hides their identity and makes the change which takes place when they unveil their radiant faces to the setting sun the more startling. They intend to watch all night and by sunset all are awake. In the morning they roll up their petals again when daylight comes on, and when the sun is well up all are asleep, tired out with the vigil of the night. The odor is most sickening.... The same flower opens several times, and grows larger as it grows older."