Morning journal and courier., 1880-07-20
The Flowers of California.

hind, and popular prejudice very justly as sociates the spring with wild flowers, yet the fields and hillsides are in bloom through many interior valleys, and in the mountains the flowers are at their height. Especially this year there were more flowers in June than in April, and there will still be throughout July and August great many familiar blossoms. They are familiar but unnamed or, if named, are so styled that one name does duty for two or three entirely different flowers It is almost humiliating to observe that until 8 plant takes it's place as a simple, a medicine, or poison, or is found to contribute in some way to our daily necessities, it is passed over in ignorance by generation after generation of careless folk. People are either too busy or too idle to name the insects and flowers. It is found sufficient to the country folk to call them weeds; and admiring ladies in their summer iaunts are satisfied with such desig- nations as ''that yellow thing" or the ether
 ''purple thing" Let me make brief contri- button to an impoverished vocabulary. It
 will not cost much trouble to identify few
 of the common flowers I shall describe, and for which I will give the most popular names that most properly belong to them in all parts of our country. Although we have not yet organized summer schools in California, like our more studious Atlantic friends, yet the teacher is abroad, and insists upon instruct ing even ip vacation.
 There is large rose-purple flower now in bloom in the central parts of the State; its color is perhaps better described to ladies as solferino. Each petal in one species has a large dark purple spot near the top in anoth- CT species there is no spot, but in both very thin, papery texture and pistil like a large lilac or yellow cross, characterize the flower
 It grows foot or two high, and has slender
 ordinary looking leaves. This is one of the absolutely unnamed. I have never heard even an attempt at christening. It does not
 come in any one of the catalogues of either
 useful or troublesome plants; it is simply a
 very beautiful flower, peculiarly Californian,
 seen by thousands of us every summer. It is a Godetia named in honor of pr. Godet, and is closely related to the Clarkias, many of
 which are now in flower, and is somewhat
 like them. One of these is still abundant in the woods in the part of Napa county from which I write and through the Coast Moun-
 tains, a strikingly beautiful, bright, rose-col- ored flower, great cluster of flowers on a | fragile stem, that shines in great beauty amid heaps of brush and sprouting under l growth. The botanist will deny the name of Clarkia to this last; but it is too slightly diff 1 erent to deserve any other popular name, and | I hope those who have separated it will put | it back again in that group.
 l All our roadsides and those fields left to a l volunteer crop, are yet adorned with the beautiful azure lilies that hold on patiently l through several months of dry weather. They are lilies in a strict sense, waving long wax like cups among the yellow grasses. Let I them not be called blue-bells. A blue bell hangs with it's mouth downward, and these blue lilies stand upright. Wild Agapanthus
 would suit them well. The great tiger lilies, | and the fragrant pale purple lily are just coming, and are not abundant so far south I But the Mariposas are scarcely gone; the gay l yellow ones, with brown spots and lines, are
 easily recognized as lilies or tulips, if it seems 1I-o1 to ho Ior1C 1i iI ] well to call them Mariposa = butter flower l The larger white Mariposa is still in bloom at l the end of June on high shelves in the noun tains The other day lady called them but tercups, but all large, cup-like flowers are not
 buttercups, nor peoples These Mariposas, root of a lily. The botanical name is Calo-
 chortus, which means pretty grass.
 You cannot help coming across one or two showy and very beautiful monkey-fowers, one large salmon-colored cup, blooming in
 great profusion on a low, sticky, ragged look
 ing plant and the other about as large, but
 of a soft, golden yellow, with reddish spots
 on one lip. The last grows always in low,
 wet, sunny places, has a weak stem and
 coarsish leaf. You always stop to pick and
 admire the golden velvet cups of this ''yellow
 thing" It is the golden monkey flower
 Mimulus luteus-and the other is the Mimu-
 Jus glutinosus. These are Latin names SC near the English that it will not puzzle the feeblest to reme mber.
 You now find everywhere, both in shelter | ed and in open places. rich yellow daisy-l like flower, with fnely-cut, dale-green leaves, like
 chrysanthemum leaves. Yellow daisy they
 call it, but it is more like the coreopsis, and for want of better popular name, let it be called so. Daisies have leaves growing or the ground, and this unusually pretty flower does not.
 Every child must stop to gather the bright scarlet flower they call Indian pink Its love of one-heaps, it's sticky stem, and it's fiery fringed petals easily describe this favoritt 1 wild flower But for very good scientific l reasons it ought not to be called pink and ! it's stickiness has earned it the name of the old wine-god's attendant, the untidy Silenus ! who fiourished before an age of pocket-hand kerchiefs. So the Greeks called this plan 1 Silene, and so should we. The English call i | catch-fy; but 50 they miss the classic stor,
 and do not improve the name. In compari 1 son with many of the misnomers that ligh l upon flowers, suppose Indian pink is tol l erable name, and we can bear it if 1t holds it. 1 ground. But there is another conspicuou!
 scarlet blossom, much more common, that il known by the same name. It will be recog l nized if describe 1t as brushy looking tuf 1 of fiame-colored flowers, seen on all open | sunny hills and borders of woods, until lat, | in the summer. Painters brush it was called | " very well named, for it looks like brusl
 that has been dipped in scarlet. In England where it blossoms in few wet meadows, it Ii | called painted-cup- It has received in bota
 ny very pretty Spanish name, Castilleia | and. to reconcile Ill differences it should b, | called so.
 In this vicinity the pentstemons some
 times called beard d-tongue, are just coming
 into flower. They are everywhere in the 1 State, very various, and almost all of then | striking. Several species continue to bloom
 through July. You will find clumps and bedi
 of these slender-stemmed, fine leaved annu
 als, with large purple or blue or pink flow
 CTS, shaped like fox glove. They all have | barren stamen, tipped with more or less of
 beard, instead of an anther. Many of them | have gone from California into Eastern and
 European gardens.
 l The splendid azalea has been fairly named l though it is properly rhododendron Rho
 dodendron Occidentalist is it's fine scientific l appellation. The fragrant chamisso white
 ming all high hillsides gets name from the l Spanish which probably compliments an early European botanist, Chamisso and another | flower like the white thorn, Spirea, is just
 now opening in large white and flesh -colored
 clusters, borne on the ends of tall, leafy wand-like boughs; the mountain phlox spreading on the edges of the last patches ot snow, in broad plates of thick-set pearly flow ers All these have found names, which are for variety of reasons, comparatively saft
 from corruption. There are a few more
 everyday flowers now in bloom which
 should like to include in my enumeration but they must wait. Indeed, it seems as i ! all our flowers which are related to those o1
 the Old World and the Eastern States, may
 be popularly known by similar names without leading to either confusion or inaccuracy. I Perhaps it is not entirely in vain that
 have offered this brief nomenclaturei inwhich | while have ayoideda a demand for the strict
 ly scientific, have also tried to point ou
 something better than the ssRed-hot- poker
 and Butter and egg style of names fos flowers.