WESTERN SPICE-BUSH.

Calycanthus occidentalis, Hook. and Arn. Sweet Shrub Family.

Shrubs.—Six to twelve feet high. Leaves.—Ovate to oblong-lanceolate; three to six inches long; dark green; roughish. Flowers.—Wine-colored (sometimes white); solitary; two inches or so across. Sepals, petals, and stamens indefinite, passing into each other; all coalescent below into the cuplike calyx-tube, on whose inner surface are borne the numerous carpels. Petals.—Linear-spatulate, usually tawny-tipped. Carpels becoming akenes. Hab.—From the lower Sacramento River northward.

This is one of our most beautiful shrubs. Upon the banks of streams, or often upon a shaded hillside where some little rill trickles out from a hidden source, it spreads its branches and lifts its canopy of ample leaves. There is a pleasant fragrance about the whole shrub, and the leaves, when crushed, are agreeably bitter. From April to November the charming flowers, like small wine-colored chrysanthemums, are produced; and these are followed by the prettily veined, urn-shaped seed-vessels, which remain upon the bushes until after the next season's flowers appear, by which time they are almost black. It is from these cuplike seed-vessels that the genus takes its name, which is derived from two Greek words, meaning flower and cup.

[CALIFORNIAN SWEET-SCENTED SHRUB—Calycanthus occidentalis.]

INDIAN PINK.

Silene Californica, Durand. Pink Family.

Root.—Deep. Stems.—Several; procumbent or sub-erect; leafy. Leaves.—Ovate-elliptic or lanceolate; eighteen lines to four inches long. Flowers.—Brilliant scarlet; over an inch across. Calyx.—Five-toothed. Petals.—Five; long-clawed; the blades variously cleft, and with two erect toothlike appendages at the throat. Stamens.—Ten; exserted with the three filiform styles. Ovary.—One-celled. Hab.—Widely distributed.