A charming little desert plant, four or five inches high, with one or more, purplish, branching stems, springing from a pretty cluster of thickish, dull green root-leaves. The flowers are half an inch across, with sticky, hairy calyxes and buds and bright purple corollas, with bright yellow throats, from which the stamens do not protrude. These little flowers look very gay and pretty against the desert sand.
Phacelia
Phacèlia lineàris
Purple
Spring, summer
Northwest and Utah
This is a delicate and pretty plant, in spite of its hairy foliage, from six inches to a foot high, with a hairy stem, purplish and somewhat branching, and alternate leaves, which are sometimes deeply cleft, usually have no leaf-stalks and are hairy and light yellowish-green in color. The flowers are pretty, grouped in rather long clusters, and are each about half an inch across, with a hairy calyx and a corolla delicately tinted with various shades of clear lilac and blue, shading to white in the center, with long narrow appendages in the throat between the stamens, which are long and conspicuous, giving a feathery appearance to the cluster. The anthers are dark purple and mature before the stigma, and the buds are pink and white. This grows on dry hillsides, often under sage-brush.
Phacelia linearis.
Phacelia Fremontii.
Phacelia
Phacèlia grandiflòra
Lilac
Summer
California
A very handsome kind, though rather coarse, and hairy and sticky all over, but with lovely, delicate flowers. The stems are from one to three feet tall and the dark green leaves are velvety on the upper side and hairy on the under. The flowers often measure two inches across, with a lilac or mauve corolla, shading to white in the center, flecked and streaked with brown, blue, or purple, and the stamens have purple filaments and pale yellow anthers. This plant is unpleasantly sticky, with a viscid fluid which stains everything with which it comes in contact, is poisonous to some people, and is found from Santa Barbara to San Diego.
Phacèlia víscida var. albiflòra
White
Spring
California