[Sidenote: =Blue Mountain Lilac= _Ceanòthus parvifòlius_ =Blue Summer California=]
An attractive mountain shrub, growing in Yosemite, and elsewhere in the Sierra Nevada Mountains at similar altitudes, low and spreading, about three feet high, with smooth, pale green branches and small, smooth, toothless leaves, dark green and shining on the upper side, pale on the under. The oblong clusters of minute blue flowers are slightly sweet-scented and about two inches long.
A large family, widely distributed; mostly herbs, with mucilaginous juice and tough, fibrous bark; leaves alternate, mostly palmately-veined and lobed, with stipules; flowers regular, perfect, or the stamens and pistils on different plants; sepals five, often with an outer row of bracts below, resembling another calyx; petals five, their bases or claws united with each other and with the base of the stamen-tube; stamens numerous, united by their filaments into a column, forming a tube enclosing the pistils; fruit a capsule, breaking when ripe into several one-seeded parts, or splitting down the back of the valves, allowing the seeds to escape. The little fruits are commonly called "cheeses." True Mallows are introduced "weeds" in this country.
[Illustration: Deer Brush--Ceanothus integerrimus.
[Sidenote: =Arizona Wild Cotton= _Thurbéria thespesioìdes (Ingenhouzia triloba)_ =White Summer Arizona=]
The only kind, a fine shrub, from four to eight feet high, with smooth leaves, most of them with three lobes, and handsome cream-white flowers, tinged with pink on the outside and measuring two inches across. This grows in the mountains of southern Arizona and is beautiful under cultivation, often growing to a height of six or eight feet in a season.
There are a number of kinds of Sidalcea, difficult to distinguish; perennials; leaves round in general outline, variously cut and lobed; flowers showy, in terminal clusters; calyx with no outer bracts, or with only one; stamen-column double; stigmas threadlike, distinguishing them from Malvastrum and Sidalcea.
[Sidenote: =Rose Mallow= _Sidálcea Califórnica_ =Pink Spring California=]
This has velvety leaves, those from the root much less deeply lobed than the others, and a slender, slightly hairy stalk, one to two feet tall, leaning to one side and bearing a loose raceme of rose-pink flowers, with petals about an inch long. Only one or two flowers are open at a time, but they are very pretty and conspicuous in open woods and along the edges of fields, around Santa Barbara, in May.