Stems.—Several inches to two feet high. Leaves.—One or two inches long. Flowers.—Axillary; sessile; parts in fours. Calyx.—Red-pink; tube an inch or more long. Petals.—Rose-pink; six lines to over an inch long. Ovary.—Four-celled. Syn.—Eucharidium concinnum, Fisch. and Mey. Hab.—The Coast Ranges, from Santa Barbara to Mendocino County.

In June these charming blossoms may be found in the company of the maidenhair fern fringing the banks of shady roads, or standing in glowing masses under the buckeye-trees. In them nature has ventured upon one of those rather daring color combinations of which we would have hardly dreamed, and the result is delightful. The petals are bright rose-pink, while the sepals are of a red pink.

SPREADING DOGBANE.

Apocynum androsæmifolium, L. Dogbane Family.

Erect; one to three feet high; spreading. Leaves.—Opposite; short-petioled; ovate or roundish; an inch or two long. Flowers.—Clustered; pink. Calyx.—Five-cleft. Corolla.—Campanulate; three or four lines long; with five revolute lobes; having a small scale at base, opposite each lobe. Stamens.—Five; on the corolla. Filaments short. Anthers erect around the stigma. Style none. Ovaries.—Two; becoming a pair of long pods. Seeds silky-tufted. Hab.—Widely distributed in the United States.

[BEAUTIFUL CLARKIA—Clarkia concinna.]

The small pink flowers of the spreading dogbane may be found all through the summer, often upon our driest hillsides. The shapely little blossoms are of a flesh-tint without, richly veined with deeper pink within, and quite fragrant. The plants have a milky juice and a tough fiber in the stem, similar to that in the American-Indian hemp. The plant was formerly supposed to be poisonous to dogs, from which fact it received its generic name, which translated gives the common English name, "dogbane." It is used in medicine as a remedy for rheumatic gout. The very long pods seem absurdly out of proportion to the small flowers.

A. cannabinum, L., the American-Indian hemp, is also found within our borders, but it grows along stream-banks and in marshy places. It has oblong, pointed leaves, and small greenish-white flowers, only two lines long, whose close cylindrical corollas hardly surpass the calyx. The yellowish-brown bark of this plant is very tough and fibrous, and at the same time soft and silky. Our Indians have always found it of the utmost value in the making of ropes, lariats, nets, mats, baskets, etc., and before the coming of the white man they even made certain articles of clothing of it. A tincture made from the root is a recognized drug in the pharmacopœia. Professor Thouin, of Paris, says that a permanent dye may be obtained from a decoction of it, which is brown or black, according to the mordant used.

FIRECRACKER FLOWER.