The plateau in the Grand Canyon is covered for miles with this low shrub, which gives the landscape its characteristic pale desert coloring. The flowers, over half an inch across, with one or two pairs of three-lobed bracts at base, grow singly at the tips of the twigs and, unlike most of this family, have no petals and only four, spreading sepals, bright yellow inside, two of them pointed and the alternate two more round in shape. The ovary is enclosed in a yellow, hollow, urn-shaped receptacle, surrounded by numerous stamens inserted on its base, the yellow anthers with threadlike filaments. The very small, narrow, toothless leaves are evergreen, leathery and stiff, opposite, grayish in color and imperceptibly downy, clustered in small separate bunches along the rigid twigs, which are set almost at right angles to the reddish-gray branches and rather swollen at the joints. The whole shrub is from two feet to four feet high, stiff, almost thorny, and rather forbidding in appearance, but the odd little flowers are pretty.
Coleogyne—ramosissima.
Hardhack—Spiraea Douglasii.
Fern-bush—Chamaebatiaria millefolium.
There are several kinds of Argentina, differing from Potentilla in the leaflets and the style.
Silver-weed
Argentìna Anserìna
(Potentilla)
Yellow
Spring, summer, autumn
North America, etc.
This forms large straggling clumps of many, pale, downy stems, lying on the ground and rooting at the joints, like strawberry runners, with handsome foliage and pretty flowers. The leaves are rich green on the upper side and covered with silky white down on the under, giving a silvery appearance, and the flowers are an inch or more across, bright yellow, with centers of the same shade, and have long flower-stalks, sometimes as much as a foot tall. This is common and conspicuous in wet meadows and also grows in Europe and Asia.
There are only a few kinds of Dryas, shrubby plants, living in cold and arctic regions. The Latin name means "wood-nymph."
Alpine Avens
Drýas octopétala
White
Summer
Northwest, etc.
This is a charming little plant, from two to five inches tall, forming low, matted clumps of many branching stems, lying on the ground and woody at the base, and many stiffish leaves, with prominent veins, dark green and smooth on the upper side and white with close down on the under, their dark tones setting off the pure-white flowers, which have downy flower-stalks and are about an inch across, with about eight petals, a golden center and the calyx covered with sticky hairs. The seed-vessels are large and feathery. This grows in alpine places, across the continent, reaching an altitude of fourteen thousand feet, and in Europe and Asia.
