Many buttercups possess an acrid juice in stem and leaves that blisters the mouths of cattle venturing to eat them when feed is scarce. European beggars rub their skins with the juice and purposely produce hideous imitations of sores in order to arouse sympathy. The ancients used it for removing birthmarks and as a last recourse in cases of leprosy.

Buttercup seeds have been found useful by the Indians, who parch them and grind them up with other seeds into a flour that is eaten without further cooking. The bitter taste disappears under this treatment and the meal has the flavor of parched corn. The flowers also yield a considerable amount of early honey.

Buttercups have long been cultivated, many of them doing well as aquatics or in moist corners of the rock garden, while others are suitable for borders. The great favorite is an Asiatic species (Ranunculus asiaticus) called the Persian buttercup and mentioned in literature as far back as 1629, but greatly improved since that time, both in size and tint of the blossoms. These exhibit nearly every color except blue, and some varieties are striped and variegated. The doubling of the petals may go so far as to produce flowers almost spherical in form and two inches in diameter, very unlike the familiar buttercup of field and meadow.

Red Columbine (Aquilegia truncata F. & M. Plate II, figure 2).-The brilliant red and yellow blossoms of the columbine sway at the tips of slender bending stems like gay butterflies on the wing. Unlike butterflies, they shun the sunshine, and during spring and early summer brighten the dusk of shady places with spots of vivid flame. To the casual observer, the oddly shaped flowers give no hint of their near kinship to the common yellow buttercup, or even to larkspurs and monkshoods; but hanging down beneath the pendant flower, well protected against sudden showers, is the cluster of many stamens and pistils that announce, as plainly as words, that columbines also are members of the oldest of flower groups-the buttercups.

In spreading a feast of honey, the columbine is less extravagant than the meadow buttercup, but more generous than its other cousins, the larkspur and monkshood, for it provides a nectary in each of the five upright spurs at the

n of the petals. Short-tongued bees find it imp sible to sip the nectar while clinging to the mass of stamens, so they often make use of the holes that lazy bumblebees have bitten in the spurs, and follow their example in stealing the hidden sweets. Bumblebees and most humming birds find no difficulty in helping themselves in the usual way and thus transferring the pollen.

The red columbine is widely distributed throughout the Pacific coast, ranging as far north as Alaska and east to Montana and Utah, and may be found in thickets and woodlands from sea level to timber line. The eastern red columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) has smaller flowers of a less brilliant hue and prefers somewhat more open situations. Colorado's State flower, the blue columbine (Aquilegia caerulea), is very large-flowered, blue and white or occasionally pure white, and often grows in dense masses in grassy openings of the spruce woods

of the Rockies. The common garden columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris) has been brought over from its native haunts in Europe and, since it hybridizes readily, produces a great variety of forms and colors. Whether wild or naturalized, all species might well be grown for the sake of the flowers in the early part of the season and the delicate foliage after the blooming is past.

Blue Larkspur (Delphinium parryi Gray. Plate II, figure 3).—From April until June the wild flowers of southern California fling a magic carpet of rainbow colors over hillsides and mesa. Scattered here and there in the mass of pink abronias, purple ice plants, yellow evening-primroses, and saffron cactus blossoms, the spirelike stalks of larkspur are densely clustered with dark purple-blue flowers. In the shade of the chaparral the stems reach a height of three feet and produce but a few unusually large flowers, while in sunny exposed spots they are rarely more than a foot high and the blossoms are crowded into a long spike.

This blue larkspur is found only in southern California in the chaparral and on grassy hillsides, but several related forms extend throughout the State and into Washington, varying in the color of their blue and in minor features.

It greatly resembles also the tall larkspur (Delphinium exaltatum) of the East, which is dark blue with yellow on the upper petals. In meadows and prairies east of the Rocky Mountains may be found a larkspur (Delphinium azurcum) of a delicate azure paling to white. There are other species and varieties growing wild in this country, and all may be recognized by the peculiar shape of the upper sepal, which resembles the spur of the lark.

A number of native larkspurs are poisonous to cattle, somewhat less so to horses, and not at all harmful to sheep, which seem able to indulge in them freely. An extract made from the seeds of the field larkspur (Delphinium consolida) of Europe is poisonous if taken internally, but is useful as an ointment or lotion.

Cultivated larkspurs afford a large number of beautiful forms and colors, varying from white through all shades of blue, lavender and purple, pink, and even yellow and scarlet. They may be single-flowered or very greatly doubled, perennial or annual; so that the range offered for individual choice is unusual.

cardinale

Scarlet Larkspur (Delphinium Hook. Plate II, figure 4).-Like flaming torches scattered through the dry chaparral of early summer, the scarlet larkspur startles one with its vivid beauty. Blooming after the rains are over and when other flowers have mostly disappeared, its usual companions are tall yellow senecios, rose-colored live-forevers, creamy cacti, and pale salvias.

Whether surrounded by the dark green or gray shrubs of the coastal sagebrush, or standing solitary in broad river plains or stony streamways, the nearly leafless stems shoot up to a height of six feet or more and are tipped with long spikes of brilliant scarlet-vermilion blossoms.

Little sister to this superb specimen of the south, another red larkspur (Delphinium nudi

caule) hides itself in cool canyons of the Pacific coast and reflects the differences in its home environment by producing fewer flowers on shorter stems.

Larkspurs have come to be quite partial to bumblebees, and their nectar is so well protected by the spur which forms an extra covering for the honey sacs that smaller bees cannot bite through and steal it.

So rapidly does the honey flow and so busily do the bumblebees work that they are able to visit the same cluster of blossoms several times in succession. Red larkspurs also attract humming birds, which seem partial to this color, and their long bills are well adapted to extract nectar from the slender spurs.

Monkshood (Aconitum columbianum Nutt. Plate II, figure 5).-Like sentinels on guard, the slender spikes of monkshood stand straight and tall among the grasses and herbs of moist mountain meadows. On shady brook banks they stretch up to a height of six or eight feet and grow in closely clustered groups with other moisture-loving plants.

Birches and maples form an arching canopy, and in their cool shadows, with roots reaching down toward the waters of the rushing brook, the dark blue-purple or white spikes of monkshood bloom through the summer, with rosepurple fireweeds and huge white-flowered cowparsnips as their companions.

Like the columbine and larkspur, the monkshood conceals its relationship to the buttercup by a fanciful disguise. Instead of wearing a saucy dunce's cap, as the larkspur does, it masquerades in a queer blue bonnet with floating ribbons. Peeping beneath the hood, one expects to see a tiny face, but finds instead the familiar cluster of stamens and separate pistils so characteristic of the buttercups.

The nectaries are neatly tucked away in the upper cowl-shaped sepal and take the form of tiny cornucopias on slender stalks. Long tongues are necessary to reach the honey, and so dependent are monkshoods on the services of the bumblebee that their very existence is at stake. It is a curious fact that countries, such as New Zealand, Australia, Arabia, and South Africa, which have no native bumblebees, also lack native monkshoods.

The bee alights on the ribbonlike lower sepals, grasps the side sepals with its front legs, and, as it sucks the nectar, moves its body back and forth over the stamens and stigmas. Besides helping itself to the honey so freely offered, it scrapes off the pollen clinging to head and body, packs it into pollen baskets in its legs, to be carried home and made into pollen bread for the baby bees.

Like its relative, the larkspur, the monkshood is careful of its pollen, not only protecting it against wetting, but ripening the anthers by twos and fours and thus maintaining a continuous supply for a week or more.

With the exception of southern California, the blue monkshood may be found throughout the West. There are several species in the Alleghenies that may also be quickly recognized by the peculiar helmet-shaped sepal.

The cultivated monkshood (Aconitum napellus) yields the drug aconite, which is used in medicine in various ways. Since many of the species have this poison in flowers as well as roots, they should never be planted near the kitchen garden or the children's garden. Otherwise, they are attractive and satisfactory garden plants, affording ornamental foliage as well as flowers.

POPPY FAMILY

Papaveraceae

Creamcups (Platystemon californicus Benth. Plate III, figure 1).-Strikingly like pale buttercups in form and structure, the light yellow blossoms of creamcups flutter airily in the sea breezes and spread a riot of springtime bloom in the sandy soils of shore, field, and roadside. They are often at their best on dunes, where they are companioned by pink abronias, yellow senecios, golden California-poppies, and baerias.

Wherever there is space, the plants are spreading, from six to nine inches tall, with numerous hairy branching stems and many flowers. In the adobe soil of cliffs, where water is harder to get than from loose sand, the entire plant becomes dwarfed, with but one to three stems two or three inches high, tiny blossoms, and small leaves only at the base. When growing in the shade of shrubs or overtopped by other herbs, the plants reach toward the light to a height of 15 inches or more and are thin-leaved and sparsely hairy, with larger flowers.

Usually the blossoms are a pale straw color or creamy white and the petals cupped, so that the common name is not only pretty, but descriptive.

Though creamcups are placed in the same group with the poppies, they actually occupy the borderland between these and buttercups, sharing the features of both.

Wind Poppy (Papaver californicum Gray. Plate III, figure 2).-The vermilion-red disks of the wind poppy glow here and there like bright flecks of flame in the shelter of the chaparral-covered slopes or in shady dells. They bloom throughout the spring in central and southern California and on Mount Tamalpais, but are so fragile that the petals fall at a touch. Unfortunately, the seeker after spring blossoms may not know this, and many a delicate beauty has been plucked only to be at once thrown aside.

So far as known, all the poppies produce poisonous alkaloids, and children especially should be warned against tasting or chewing any part of the plant. The opium poppy is of considerable value in commerce, the seeds yielding an oil that is used as a substitute for olive oil in cooking and as a drier in painting. Opium is obtained from the milky juice of the seed pods. Besides being used as an intoxicant, it is valuable as morphine for relieving pain and inducing sleep.

California-poppy (Eschscholtzia californica Cham. Plate III, figure 3).-Magic carpets of gold are flung far and wide over hillside and valley as the California-poppy comes into bloom. At the height of its glory, in the spring, when

the winter rains have been seasonable and sufficient, the blossoms may cover many square miles so thickly as to be visible at great distances. One poppy bed, 20 miles long by 10 wide, has been seen as a sheet of yellow from a peak 40 miles away. Another, composed entirely of the orange-red variety, was of such brilliant hue and so thickly sown as to look from afar like the bare red earth of a great Permian exposure.

The California-poppy is exceedingly variable in all its parts. The color may range from white, turning to pink with age, through all shades of yellow, from pale lemon to pure canary and deep orange-red. The various forms are sometimes named as different varieties or even species; but, whether kept separate or grouped together, these "cups of gold," as the Spaniards called them, are at home along the coast and in interior valleys, in sand and dunes of the seashore, in bunchgrass prairies, along roadsides, and in fields throughout California, northward to Oregon and Washington, south into Mexico, across the Colorado Desert and Arizona, and eastward into New Mexico.

For more detailed information concerning California's State flower, see the National Geographic Society's publication, "The Book of Wild Flowers.'

Bush Poppy (Dendromecon rigidum Benth. Plate III, figure 4).-With its wealth of large, bright yellow flowers and grayish green foliage, the bush poppy lends a sunny aspect to the chaparral, even on cloudy days. It is especially fond of burned-over ground and often occupies this quickly and completely, though it usually occurs as scattered individuals here and there among the shrubs of southern and middle California.

Poppies are known as pollen flowers, since they have no nectar and rely on an abundance of this golden powder to attract their insect friends. The flowers of the bush poppy have a fresh smell like cucumbers, but are ornamental only if left undisturbed, for the petals fall soon after the blossoms are picked. This habit of the poppy flowers has been immortalized by Robert Burns' poem, in which the fleeting nature of pleasure is likened to the quick destruction of the poppy blossom when plucked.

These plants exude a bitter milky juice which, like all milky saps, has enjoyed some popular repute in the removal of warts. An oil extracted from the seeds has a use similar to that of castor oil.

FUMITORY FAMILY

Fumariaceae

Pink Dicentra (Dicentra formosa DC. Plate III, figure 5).-The pale waxen flowers of the pink dicentra hang pendant from curving stems and brighten shady places here and there in moist woods. The diligent seeker for shy blossoms may find these through the summer in favored spots of the Coast Ranges and in the Sierra Nevada up to 9,000 feet. They are especially large and showy in Paradise Valley, but in the Yosemite may be easily overlooked, since the plants are seldom found in flower, although the delicate gray-green leaves beautifully cut

into a graceful fringe are sufficiently attractive in themselves.

The dicentra of the East (Dicentra cucullaria) is called Dutchman's-breeches, and, although the dainty blossoms are white or pale pink, their two petals, baggy at one end and tapering to two narrow extensions, look for all the world like this picturesque apparel hung upside down on a clothesline. This is one of the earliest harbingers of spring in the woods of the Allegheny Mountains and westward to Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri.

Only recently has this charming plant been found to be dangerously poisonous to stock, although long known in certain localities as staggerweed, because of its effect on cattle grazing upon it. Another common eastern relative (Dicentra canadensis) is a white-flowered form with pink tips, called squirrel-corn because of its many small tubers.

Golden Eardrops (Dicentra chrysantha H. & A. Plate III, figure 6).-Standing up stiffly here and there in the chaparral, the tall yellowgreen stems of this yellow dicentra bear aloft loose clusters of golden blossoms that perch jauntily erect instead of drooping gracefully, like other bleeding-hearts. In contrast to the stiff stems, often five feet tall, the finely cut. fernlike leaves, a foot or more long and a pale shining green, seem unusually graceful.

The plants are not very abundant, but may be found scattered through sandy washes and in the chaparral of central and southern California, blooming in May and June.

Golden Corydalis (Corydalis aurea Willd. Plate III, figure 7).-A lover of the open spaces, the golden corydalis covers gravelly soils with masses of feathery foliage and adorns them with loose clusters of bright yellow blossoms on delicate stems. When moisture is lacking, the plants may become dwarfed to an inch or two in height, but where conditions permit luxuriant growth a single plant may grow a foot tall and cover an area two feet across.

The genus is closely related to the bleeding. heart and Dutchman's-breeches, though it has but one spur and the flowers are yellow instead of pink. The earliest blossoms appear in March, and in the mountains laggards may be found in late summer and early autumn.

CAPER FAMILY

Capparidaceae

Bladderpod (Isomeris arborca Nutt. Plate IV, figure 1).-Dotted over hills and cliffs of southern California and extending to the edge of the desert, the low shrubs of the bladderpod, with their smooth green leaves and loose clusters of clear yellow flowers, add a pleasing note to the uniform gray of the coastal sagebrush.

Though the flowers themselves are not illsmelling, the bruised foliage has a strongly pungent odor that is distinctly unpleasant to most people, and thus enables this species to become a member in good standing of the "Flower Self-Protective Association."

A distinctive characteristic of the plant is its large leathery pods, which droop on long stalks