"Insect or blossom? Fragile, fairy thing, Poised upon slender tip and quivering To flight! a flower of the fields of air; A jeweled moth, a butterfly with rare And tender tints upon his downy wing A moment resting in our happy sight; A flower held captive by a thread so slight Its petal-wings of broidered gossamer Are, light as the wind, with every wind astir, Wafting sweet odor, faint and exquisite. O dainty nursling of the field and sky! What fairer thing looks up to heaven's blue, And drinks the noontide sun, the dawning's dew? Thou winged bloom! thou blossom butterfly!"
WESTERN BOYKINIA.
Boykinia occidentalis, Torr. and Gray. Saxifrage Family.
Stems.—Slender; a foot or two high. Leaves.—Round-reniform; palmately three- to seven-lobed; one to three inches broad; the lobes coarsely toothed. Flowers.—In long-peduncled, loose panicles; white; four lines across; parts in fives. Calyx.—With acute teeth. Petals.—On the sinuses of the calyx. Stamens.—On the calyx, opposite its teeth. Filaments short. Ovary.—With its two cells attenuate into the slender styles. Hab.—Coast Ranges, from Santa Barbara to Washington.
The tufted leaves, and exquisitely delicate saxifrage-like clusters of the Boykinia, fringe our streams in early summer.
SOAP-PLANT. AMOLE.
Chlorogalum pomeridianum, Kunth. Lily Family.
Bulb.—One to four inches in diameter; densely brown-fibrous. Leaves.—Six to eighteen inches long. Scape.—One to five feet high; bearing a loosely spreading panicle. Perianth.—White; of six spreading, recurved segments nine lines long. Stamens.—Six; shorter than the segments. Ovary.—Three-celled. Style filiform. Stigma three-lobed. Hab.—Widely distributed.
The leaves of the soap-plant have been with us all the spring, increasing in length as the season has advanced. You can easily recognize them, as they resemble a broad, wavy-margined grass, usually lying flat upon the ground, with some of the ragged brown fibres of the bulb showing aboveground, like the fragment of an old manilla mat.
In early summer, from their midst begins to shoot a slender stalk. When the process of its growth is complete, it stands from two to five feet high, with slender, widespreading branches and rather sparsely scattered flowers.