Yerba Buena—Micromeria Chamissonis.
Mustang Mint—Monardella lanceolata.
There are several kinds of Ramona, abundant in southern California; shrubby plants, with wrinkled leaves and flowers like those of Salvia, except for differences in the filaments; stamens two. They are very important honey-plants, commonly called Sage, and by some botanists considered to be a species of Salvia.
Desert Ramona
Ramòna incàna (Audibertia)
Blue
Spring
Southwest
A low desert shrub, from two to three feet high, varying very much in color. On the plateau in the Grand Canyon it is delicate and unusual in coloring, with pale gray, woody stems and branches and small, stiffish, gray-green, toothless leaves, covered with white down. The small flowers are bright blue, projecting from close whorls of variously tinted bracts, and have long stamens, protruding from the corolla-tube, with blue filaments and yellow anthers, and a blue style. The bracts are sometimes lilac, sometimes pale blue, or cream-color, but always form delicate pastelle shades, peculiar yet harmonizing in tone with the vivid blue of the flowers and with the pale foliage. This is strongly aromatic when crushed. In the Mohave Desert it is exceedingly handsome, but the coloring is often less peculiar, as the foliage is not quite so pale as in other places, such as the Grand Canyon, and the flowers vary from blue to lilac or white. It blooms in spring and when its clumps of purple are contrasted with some of the yellow desert flowers, clustered about the feet of the dark Joshua Trees which grow around Hesperia, the effect is very fine.
Humming-bird Sage
Ramòna grandiflòra (Audibertia)
Red
Spring
California
This is a handsome and very decorative plant, though rather coarse and sticky, with a stout, bronze-colored stem, which is woody at base, from two to three feet tall, and velvety, wrinkled leaves, from three to eight inches long, with scalloped edges and white with down on the under side. The flowers are an inch and a half long, with crimson corollas of various fine shades, which project from the crowded whorls of broad, bronze or purplish bracts, arranged in tiers along the stem. Sometimes there are as many as nine of these clusters and the effect of the whole is dark and very rich, especially in shady places. This is common in the hills, from San Francisco south. Humming-birds are supposed to be its only visitors.
Ramona incana.
