GREAT WILLOW-HERB. FIREWEED.
Epilobium spicatum, Lam. Evening-Primrose Family.
Stems.—Often four to seven feet high. Leaves.—Scattered; willow-like. Flowers.—Purplish-pink; an inch or more across. Calyx-tube.—Linear; limb four-parted; often colored. Stamens.—Eight. Anthers purplish. Ovary.—Four-celled. Seeds silky-tufted. Syn.—E. angustifolium, L. Hab.—The Sierras; eastward to the Atlantic; also in the North Coast mountains. Found also in Europe and Asia.
This plant has received one of its English names, because its leaves are like those of the willow and its seeds are furnished with silken down, like the fluff on the willow.
It is our finest and most showy species of Epilobium, and is also found in the Eastern States, where it is still known by a former name—E. angustifolium, L. Owing to the fact that it grows with special luxuriance in spots which have been recently burned over, it is commonly known as "fireweed." It may be found in perfection in the Sierras in August, where its great spikes of large pink flowers make showy masses of color along the streams and through the meadows, commanding our warmest admiration.
In the fall the tall, pliant, widely branching stems of the "autumn willow-herb"—E. paniculatum, Nutt.—stand everywhere by the roadside. The small pink flowers, half an inch across, terminate the almost leafless stems, and later are replaced by the dry, curled remains of the opened capsules and the feathery down of the escaping seeds.
![[GREAT WILLOW-HERB—Epilobium spicatum.]](#3624944100741987669_f090.png.id-7209898946606933516.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}