An odd-looking plant, with very pretty, feathery flower-clusters. The hairy stem is over a foot tall and the leaves are bright yellowish-green and mostly smooth on the upper side, with hairy margins and hairy on the under side. The flowers are a warm shade of bright golden-yellow and form a handsome, rather flat-topped cluster, with long stamens, and the oblong pods are an inch long or less, flat and much broader than those of the last. The flowers are slightly sweet-scented and the whole plant exudes a faint unpleasant odor. This is conspicuous on the dreary mesas around Reno, often growing with Cleomella longipes, which it very much resembles in general appearance, except for the pods, which are quite different.
There is only one kind of Isomeris.
Bladderpod
Isómeris arbòrea
Yellow
Spring
California
This is a shrub about three feet high, which is attractive except for its unpleasant smell. The leaves are smooth, toothless, stiffish and thickish, and bluish-green, with a small bristle at the tip, and mostly with three leaflets. The pretty flowers are nearly an inch across and warm yellow in color, not very bright but pretty in tone, with six very long, yellow stamens, and form a short, oblong cluster. The ovary has such a long stalk, even in the flower, that it gives an odd appearance and it develops into a very curious and conspicuous, drooping pod, an inch and a half long, much inflated and resembling a very fat pea-pod, on a long stalk, with two rows of seeds like little peas inside it, which taste very bitter. This is quite common on southern mesas. The name Bladderpod is also used for Lesquerella, which belongs to the Mustard Family.
Bladderpod—Isomeris arborea.
ORPINE FAMILY. Crassulaceae.
A rather large family, widely distributed; odd-looking, mostly very succulent herbs, with smooth, fleshy leaves and stems, without stipules; flowers in clusters; sepals, petals, pistils, and stamens, all of the same number, usually four or five, sometimes the stamens twice as many; ovary superior; receptacle with honey-bearing scales, one behind each pistil; pistils separate, developing into small dry pods, containing few or many, minute seeds. Some of these plants look like tiny cabbages and we are all familiar with their tight little rosettes in the formal garden-beds of hotels and railway stations, where they are so stiff and unattractive that we hardly recognize them when we find them looking exceedingly pretty in their natural homes. The Latin name means "thick."
There are many kinds of Sedum, no one kind very widely distributed; fleshy herbs; leaves usually alternate; flowers star-like, often in one-sided clusters; stamens and pistils sometimes in different flowers on different plants; sepals and petals four or five; stamens eight or ten, on the calyx, the alternate ones usually attached to the petals; styles usually short. The Latin name means "to sit," because these plants squat on the ground, and Stonecrop is from their fondness for rocks.