From one to two feet tall, with a rather stout, more or less branching stem and soft, rather downy, dull green leaves. The flowers are about an inch across, with purplish-pink petals, often stained with crimson at the tips. This is found on dry hills in the Coast Ranges.
Farewell-to-Spring—G. deflexa.
G. Goddardii var. capitata.
Godetia quadrivulnera.
Godètia vimínea
Purplish-pink
Summer
Northwest
A handsome plant, with nearly smooth, slender, reddish stems, a few inches to two feet tall, and smooth, pale-green, toothless, narrow leaves, mostly without leaf-stalks. The buds are erect and the flowers form a long, loose cluster, with bright purplish-pink petals, half an inch to over an inch long, with a large, magenta blotch near the center, or at the tip, and yellowish at base; the stamens and pistil all purple; the calyx-lobes not caught together, but turned primly back. This forms fine patches of bright color in rather meadowy places in Yosemite and elsewhere in the Sierra Nevada foothills. G. Dudleyàna is pretty and slender, with drooping buds and light lilac-pink flowers, the petals paler at base, with darker dots, the calyx-lobes caught together and turned to one side, and also makes beautiful patches of color on sunny slopes around Yosemite.
There are several kinds of Clarkia, resembling Godetia, but the petals have claws. The stems are brittle; the leaves mostly alternate, with short, slender leaf-stalks; the buds nodding; the flowers in terminal clusters, with four petals, never yellow, and four sepals, turned back; the stamens eight, those opposite the petals often rudimentary; the stigma four-lobed; the capsule long, leathery, erect, more or less four-angled, with many seeds. Named in honor of Captain Clarke, of the Lewis and Clarke expedition, the first to cross the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, in 1806.
Clarkia
Clàrkia élegans
Pink
Spring, summer
California
A conspicuous plant, on account of the oddly contrasting colors of the flowers, and very variable both in size and smoothness. It grows from six inches to six feet high; the stems more or less branching; the leaves sometimes toothed and often reddish; the buds and calyxes often woolly. The flowers are very gay; the sepals being dark red or purple, the petals, with long, slender claws, bright pink and the anthers scarlet! The stamens, four long and four short, have a hairy, reddish scale at the base of each filament, the anthers of the shorter stamens often white, and the capsule is usually curved, with no stalk, nearly an inch long, often hairy. When the foliage is red, as it often is, the various combinations of red in the flowers and leaves are quite startling. This is common in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and Coast Ranges and is often rather shabby looking, but in favorable situations is very handsome.
