These flowers often look down at us in a sort of mocking, Mephistophelian manner, as they hang amid the rich greens of other shrubs and trees. Seen with a glass, they are quite glandular. The fifth stamen looks like a very cunning little golden hearth-brush.
HUMMING-BIRD'S SAGE.
Audibertia grandiflora, Benth. Mint Family.
Coarse plants, with woolly stems; one to three feet high. Leaves.—Opposite; wrinkly; white-woolly beneath; crenate; the lower three to eight inches long; hastate-lanceolate; on margined petioles; upper sessile; pointed. Inflorescence.—Over a foot long, with many large, widely separated whorls of crimson flowers. Corollas.—Eighteen lines long. Stamens and style much exserted. Flower-bracts.—Ovate; sharp-pointed; often crimson-tinged. (Otherwise as A. stachyoides.) Hab.—The Coast Ranges, from San Mateo southward.
This, the largest-flowered of all our Audibertias, becomes especially conspicuous by April and May in southern woodlands, where its large, dark flower-clusters may be seen in little companies amid the shadows. The leaves and bracts are quite viscid, and have a rather rank, unpleasant odor; but the flowers are not without a certain comeliness. The long, crimson trumpets are arranged in whorls about the stems, projecting from many densely crowded bracts. Tier after tier of these interrupted whorls, sometimes as many as nine, mount the stems. The bracts and stems are usually of a rich bronze, which harmonizes finely with the color of the flowers. The joint in the filament is quite conspicuous in this species.
"Humming-birds that dart in the sun like green and golden arrows"
seem to be the sole beneficiaries of the abundant nectar in these deep tubes.
[CLIMBING PENTSTEMOM—Pentstemon cordifolius.]
![[CLIMBING PENTSTEMOM—Pentstemon cordifolius.]](#3624944100741987669_f137.png.id-1493510540844471773.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}