This is very much like the last in size, form, and foliage and is equally charming, but the flowers are all pure white, or pinkish, instead of yellow. It is one of the most attractive of the white desert flowers.
Desert Star
Erimiástrum bellidoìdes
Lilac
Spring
Arizona
A charming little desert plant, with spreading stems and small, narrow, toothless, gray bluish-green leaves, which are soft, but sprinkled with small, stiff, white bristles, the whole forming a rosette, five or six inches across, growing flat on the sand and ornamented with many pretty little flowers. They are each set off by a little rosette of leaves and are over half an inch across, with pinkish-lilac rays, shading to white towards the yellow center and tinted with bright purple on the back.
Desert Star—Erimiastrum bellidoides.
Chaenactis—C. Douglasii.
Golden Girls—Chaenactis lanosa.
Venegasia
Venegàsia carpesioìdes
Yellow
Summer
California
These big, leafy plants, with their bright flowers, are a splendid feature of the California woods and canyons in June, especially on the slopes of the Santa Inez mountains, where they often cover large areas with green and gold; unfortunately the smell is rather disagreeable. The leafy stems are four or five feet high, nearly smooth, with alternate, bright green leaves, almost smooth and thin in texture, and the flowers, resembling Sun-flowers, are over two inches across, with clear yellow rays, an orange center, and an involucre of many green scales, overlapping and wrapped around each other, so that the bud looks much like a tiny head of lettuce. This was named for Venegas, a Jesuit missionary, and is the only kind, growing near the coast in the South.
Lessingia
Lessíngia leptóclada
Lilac
Summer
California
This is a slender plant, from six inches to two feet tall, with pale gray green, woolly leaves, the lower ones somewhat toothed, and pale pinkish-lilac flowers, not very conspicuous in themselves, but sometimes growing in such quantities that they form pretty patches of soft pinkish color in sandy places. The flower-head is about half an inch long, with no rays, but the outer flowers in the head are larger and have long lobes resembling rays. This is very variable, especially in size, and is common along dry roadsides and quite abundant in Yosemite. The picture is of a small plant. L. Germanòrum, which is common on sandy hills along the coast from San Francisco to San Diego, has yellow flowers and blooms in autumn.
There are many kinds of Baeria, not easily distinguished.