Small Shooting Star—Dodecatheon pauciflorum.
Flowering Ash—Fraxinus macropetala.
GENTIAN FAMILY. Gentianaceae.
A large family, widely distributed, most abundant in temperate regions; smooth herbs, with colorless, bitter juice; leaves toothless, usually opposite, without leaf-stalks or stipules; flowers regular; calyx four to twelve-toothed; corolla with united lobes, twisted or overlapping in the bud, of the same number as the calyx-teeth; stamens inserted on the tube or throat of the corolla, as many as its lobes, alternate with them; ovary superior, mostly one-celled, with a single style or none, and one or two stigmas; fruit a capsule, mostly with two valves, containing many seeds. These plants were named for King Gentius of Illyria, said to have discovered their medicinal value.
There are several kinds of Frasera, North American, all but one western; herbs, with thick, bitter, woody roots; leaves opposite or in whorls; flowers numerous; corolla wheel-shaped, with four divisions, each with one or two fringed glands and sometimes also a fringed crown at base; stamens on the base of the corolla, with oblong, swinging anthers, the filaments often united at base; ovary egg-shaped, tapering to a slender style, with a small, more or less two-lobed, stigma; capsule leathery, egg-shaped, with flattish seeds.
Columbo, Deer's Tongue
Fràsera speciòsa
Greenish-white
Spring, summer, autumn
West, etc.
A handsome plant, though rather coarse, from two to six feet tall, with a pale glossy stem, very stout, sometimes over two inches across at the base, and very smooth, pale green leaves, in whorls of four and six, the lower ones sometimes a foot long. The flowers are mixed with the leaves all along the upper part of the stem, but mostly crowded at the top in a pyramidal cluster about six inches long, and are each nearly an inch and a half across, with a greenish or bluish-white corolla, the lobes bordered with violet and dotted with purple, and on each lobe two glands covered by a fringed flap, resembling a small petal, these fringes forming a sort of cross on the corolla. The four stamens stand stiffly out between the corolla-lobes and the general effect of the flower is so symmetrical that it suggests an architectural or ecclesiastical ornament. Though the flowers are not bright, this plant is decorative on account of its luxuriant size and pale foliage, and if Mr. Burbank could make the flowers clear white or purple it would be magnificent. It grows in the western mountains, as far east as Dakota and New Mexico. The finest I ever saw were on an open slope, in a high pass in the Wasatch Mountains, where they reared their pale spires proudly far above the surrounding herbage.
Columbo—Frasera speciosa.