A very attractive and graceful mountain plant, with pretty flowers and fine foliage. The stems are hollow and usually smooth, from one to five feet tall, and the leaves are rather thin and soft in texture, usually smooth, with a "bloom." The flowers are in handsome loose clusters, most of them drooping, and have a corolla over half an inch long, which is a beautiful shade of bright light blue, often tinged with pink, with white crests in the throat, and the style is long and protruding. The buds are bright pink, contrasting well with the blue flowers. This grows near streams, in the higher mountains. It is often called Mountain Bluebell, but that name belongs to Campanula and is therefore misleading. (This has recently been "separated" into several species.)
Lungwort
Merténsia brevístyla
Blue
Spring, summer
Utah, Col., Wyo.
This is an attractive plant and looks a good deal like a Forget-me-not. It grows from four to ten inches tall and has dull bluish-green leaves, which are downy on the upper side and smooth on the under, and graceful clusters of pretty little flowers. The buds are pinkish-purple and the flowers are small, with hairy calyxes and brilliant sky-blue corollas, the stamens and style not protruding. This grows in mountain canyons, up to an altitude of seven thousand feet.
Mertensia—M. brevistyla.
Languid Lady—Mertensia Sibirica.
There are many kinds of Heliotrope, widely distributed in temperate and tropical regions; ours have small, white or blue flowers, in coiled spikes; the corolla salver-form or funnel-form, without crests or hairs; the stamens not protruding, the filaments short or none, the anthers sometimes joined by their pointed tips; the ovary not four-lobed, but sometimes grooved, with a short style, the stigma cone-shaped or round.
Sea-side Heliotrope, Chinese Pusley
Heliotròpium Curassávicum
White
Summer, autumn
Cal., Oreg., etc.
This is not a pretty plant and is rather insignificant because of its dull coloring. It forms low, branching, straggling clumps, with thickish stems and leaves, which are succulent and perfectly smooth, with a "bloom," and the flowers are small, the corolla white or pale lilac, with a yellow "eye" which changes to purple, forming crowded coiled spikes, mostly in pairs, without bracts. The fruit consists of four nutlets. This is widely distributed, in moist, salty or alkaline places, growing also in the East and in South America and the Old World.
There are several kinds of Oreocarya, natives of western North America and Mexico, coarse, hairy, perennial or biennial herbs, with thick woody roots; the leaves narrow, alternate or from the root; the flowers small, mostly white, in clusters, with a funnel-form or salver-form corolla, usually with crests and folds in the throat; the stamens not protruding; the style usually short. The name is from the Greek, meaning "mountain-nut," which does not seem very appropriate.
Oreocarya
Oreocàrya multicàulis
White
Spring
Ariz., Utah, etc.