United States or Kiribati ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Leaves alternate, with very short petioles, at the base of which is a pair of short spines, and a small tuft of wool in the axil; blade 3 in. long by 2 in. broad, soft, fleshy, shining green. Flowers semi-transparent, white, in terminal panicles; sepals and petals ¾ in. long by ¼ in. wide; stamens in a large, spreading cluster, white, with yellow anthers.
The tallest of the grasses have ribbon leaves well tempered and arched, and with no lack of bristly spikes and nodding purple panicles. The alpine grasses of the Sierra, making close carpets on the glacier meadows, I have not yet seen in Alaska. The ferns are less numerous in species than in California, but about equal in the number of fronds.
For planting in situations where large-growing subjects would be out of place this is a valuable tree, while the wealth of flowers renders it particularly interesting and effective. It rarely exceeds 30 feet in height, with leaves not unlike those of the common Ash, and conspicuous panicles of light, feathery, white petaliferous flowers, produced usually in great abundance all over the tree.
Some I have seen with the flowers double, others with branched panicles; some that grow very luxuriantly, and others that are little better than annuals; and there is also a variety in cultivation called PACEY's Rye-grass, much sought for.
The male flowers are usually on long scantily-branched auxiliary panicles, whereas the female flowers are mostly in the axils of the leaves close to the stem.
In the finer species they are lanceolate, with a shining surface of bright green, traversed by crimson veins and petioles of the same colour. The flowers are very small, and hang in clustering panicles like lilacs. They are generally of a deep roseate colour, paler near the stalk, and dark crimson within the tube, with white curly hairs bordering the laciniae of the corolla.
Hardly have hardhack and meadow-sweet, which are mid-summer plants, reached the fullness of mature bloom, so softly does the spring linger in this sheltered spot, so gently does the summer press her fervor on spring-watered sphagnum. Crowding up among these have come green sprigs from perennial roots which are to bear on their tops yellow heads of goldenrod and loose panicles of purple asters.
A shrub of 4 feet in height, with deep green serrated leaves, that are 2 inches long and pubescent on the under sides. Flowers white, in axillary panicles, and produced in great abundance. This is one of the hardiest species, but succeeds best when afforded wall protection. C. AZUREUS. Mexico, 1818.
Tormented, thin forests of it stalk drearily in the high mesas, particularly in that triangular slip that fans out eastward from the meeting of the Sierras and coastwise hills where the first swings across the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley. The yucca bristles with bayonet-pointed leaves, dull green, growing shaggy with age, tipped with panicles of fetid, greenish bloom.
A handsome, stout species, 4 feet high, with large, pinnate, bright green leaves, and small, white, sweetly-scented flowers produced in thyrsoid panicles. S. THUNBERGII. Thunberg's Spiraea. Japan. The white flowers of this species smell somewhat like those of the Hawthorn, and are freely produced on the leafless, twiggy stems, in March or early in April, according to the state of the weather.
Word Of The Day