N. maculata, Benth., found in Middle California and the High Sierras, is a charming form, with large flowers, whose petals bear strong violet blotches at the top.
RATTLE-WEED. LOCO-WEED.
Astragalus leucopsis, Torr. and Gray. Pea Family.
Stems.—A foot or so high. Leaflets.—In many pairs; six lines or more long. Flowers.—Greenish-white; six lines long; in spikelike racemes an inch or two long. Calyx.—With teeth more than half the length of the campanulate-tube. Pod.—Thin; bladdery-inflated; an inch or more long, on a smooth stalk twice or thrice the length of the calyx-tube. (See Astragalus.) Hab.—Santa Barbara to San Diego.
These plants are very noticeable and quite pretty, with their pale foliage, symmetrical leaves, and white flowers; but they are dreaded by the farmers of the region of their growth, who aver that they are deadly loco-weeds. It is said that native stock will not touch them; but animals brought from a distance and unacquainted with them, eat them, with dreadful results of loco.
We have numerous species, all rather difficult of determination.
WILD MORNING-GLORY.
Convolvulus luteolus, Gray. Morning-Glory Family.
Stems.—Twining and climbing twenty feet or more. Leaves.—Alternate; sagittate; two inches or so long; smooth. Peduncles.—Several-flowered; axillary, with two small linear-lanceolate bracts a little below the flower. Flowers.—Cream-color or pinkish, sometimes deep rose. Sepals.—Five; without bracts immediately below them. Corolla.—Open funnel-form; eighteen lines long; not lobed or angled. Stamens.—Five. Ovary.—Globose; two-celled or imperfectly four-celled. Style filiform. Stigmas two. Hab.—Throughout California.
I remember long stretches of mountain road where the wild morning-glory has completely covered the unsightly shrubs charred by a previous year's fire, flinging out its slender stems, lacing and interlacing them in airy festoons, which are covered with the fragile flowers in greatest profusion. In these tangles, the industrious spiders have hung their exquisite geometrical webs, which catch the glittering water-drops in their meshes. When the sun comes out after a dense, cool fog-bath on a summer morning, nothing more charmingly fresh could be imagined than such a scene.