The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1897-12-19
HER WILD
FLOWERS,
BY CARL PURDY
BY CARL PURDY

II Ok one VINO loves TO search
- mountain and valley, canyon
and seashore, for natures beau
tiful blossoms, California is a
highly favored field. From the Pacifics
shore, where beautiful plants cling to
the bluffs and are bathed in the spray
to Sierra's pinnacles, where the snowy
mantle is lifted for a very brief sea-
son and reveals lovely rock gardens, or
the deserts which, wild and barren as
they usually are, have their short but
brilliant season when wealth of
snowy blossoms fairly dazzle the eyes
of the few chance visitors, every part
Of the empire which we call California
has it's beautiful flora and in it's sea-
son vies for floral pre-eminence.
The wonderful varieties of soils, CHI
mates and situations with which Cali
fornia is endowed are extremely IA
vorable to the development of plant
species, and in no other part of the
world is there greater variety in the
same area.
For one who loves flowers for their
beauty, the field within this State is
unlimited, and a lifetime might be
spent within CALIFORNIA; confines with
out monotony.
ence is added, the field is no less invit-
ing, for as yet it is imperfectly worked
over BY botanists, and a search on al
most any mountain may be rewarded
by finding some rare or unnamed spe-
cies.
To even mention the beautiful wild
flowers of California would fill a book,
and in this brief article 1 can only
speak of a very few.
On the foothills of our great valleys
there is dubious plant belonging to
the lily family, having grassy leaves
and slender, erect stems a foot or so
high, which bear beautiful cup-shaped
flowers. In many sections the flowers
are marked brilliantly with lines and
dots and eye-like spots. very suggest
i've of a butter1ys wings. Our Spanish
predecessors saw the resemblance and
called them Mariposas, their name for
the butterfly. Botanists know them as
calochortus, but the Spanish name so
well deserved has chung to them, and
| they are known the world over as mar
| iposa or butterfly tulips.
Scarcely any section of California is
! destitute of some sort of mariposa tu-
| lips, and the colors of the rainbow have
! been exhausted in tinting them. In
some places they are yellow, in others
red. Puppies, lilacs, lavenders and
pinks are found. In the deserts one is
! to be seen with flowers of the most in
| tense glowing vermilion, and in some
places nature has fairly run riot in
color and nearly every shade can be
found in one field. / we'll remember a
spot in the upper yellow pine belt of Ell
| Dorado County where they covered
| acres almost solidly with hundreds of
thousands of specimens. The cups were
from two or four inches across, and in
every shade from white, through lilac
to purple, and through pink to claret
and deep red. The markings were as
remarkable. All had a dark eye and
delicate pencilings, and in some there
was added a blotch at the top as if a
drop of blood had fallen upon the petal.
In still others this blotch was gold, or
the whole top of the petal flushed or
rayed with gold. A thousand flowers
could have been picked without dupli-
cation, and no orchid could excel them
! in beauty.
In true lilies California is rich, for
no less than eleven sorts are to be
found within our borders, numbering
some of the finest in the world, vet !
doubt if one in ten of our people has
seen one of them, for in California the
lilies grow in the mountains away from