Chinese Houses
Collínsia bícolor
Purple and white
Spring, summer
California
These are charming plants, from six inches to a foot and a half tall, with very delicately made flowers. The leaves are smooth or downy and more or less toothed, with rough edges, and the flowers are arranged in a series of one-sided clusters along the upper part of the stem, which is more or less branching. The corollas are about three-quarters of an inch long and vary in color, being sometimes all white. In the shady woods around Santa Barbara they often have a white upper lip, which is tipped with lilac and specked with crimson, and a lilac lower lip, and here they are much more delicate in appearance than on the sea-cliffs at La Jolla, where they grow in quantities among the bushes and are exceedingly showy. In the latter neighborhood the flowers are nearly an inch long and the upper lip is almost all white and marked with a crescent of crimson specks above a magenta base, and the lower lip is almost all magenta, with a white stripe at the center, the contrast between the magenta and white being very striking and almost too crude. The arrangement of the flowers is somewhat suggestive of the many stories of a Chinese pagoda and the plant is common.
Blue-lips
Collínsia multiflòra
Lilac, blue, and pink
Summer
Northwest
A very attractive little plant, smooth all over, about six inches tall, with toothless, light green leaves and pretty flowers, each over half an inch long. The upper petals are pinkish-lilac, the lower petals a peculiar shade of bright blue, and the tube is pink; the contrast between the blue and pink giving an odd and pretty effect. This grows in the woods around Mt. Shasta.
There are many kinds of Scrophularia, most of them natives of Europe. They are rank perennial herbs, usually with opposite leaves; the corolla with no spur and with five lobes, all erect except the lowest one, which is small and turned back; the stamens five, four of them with anthers and the fifth reduced to a scale under the upper lip. These plants are supposed to be a remedy for scrofula.
Blue-lips—C. multiflora.
Chinese Houses—Collinsia bicolor.
California Bee-plant
Scrophulària Califórnica
Red, green
Spring, summer
Northwest, Cal.
This is a coarse plant, smooth, or rather sticky and hairy, with several stout, square stems, and forming a large clump, from two to six feet high. The little flowers have a quaint appearance, but are usually only about a quarter of an inch long, with brownish-red or greenish corollas, which are neither pretty nor conspicuous, but the variety floribúnda, of southern California, has flowers which are nearly half an inch long, with rich red corollas, handsome and brilliant in effect. These plants yield a great deal of honey and are common and widely distributed.
There are several kinds of Diplacus, much resembling Mimulus, except that they are shrubs, with evergreen leaves.