PENTSTEMON BEARD-TONGUE. Pentstemon pubescens.

“Flowers spring up and die ungathered.”

HE wild Pentstemon is a slender, elegant branching plant, not unlike in outline to the fox-glove. The flowers are delicately shaded from white to pale azure-blue, sometimes varying to deeper blue. The corolla is an inflated slender tube, somewhat flattened on the upper side, with a rigid line passing from the base of the tube to the upper lip. There are also two bearded lines within. The lower lip is three-cleft and slightly projecting beyond the two-lobed upper lip; the stamens are five, but one is sterile and thickly beset with fine white hairs (or bearded). The name is derived from a Greek word signifying five. The root leaves are broadly lanceolate and coarsely toothed; the upper or stem-leaves narrower, and nearly clasping the stem. The flowers grow on long branching stalks in a loose panicle.

The plant is perennial, from one to two feet in height; it seems addicted to dry gravelly soil on river banks and dry pastures. The Beard-tongue would be well worthy of cultivation; though less showy than the garden varieties, it is not less beautiful and keeps in bloom a long time, from July to September; it might be mixed with the red flowering plants of the garden to great advantage.

PLATE VIII.

1 NYMPHÆA ODORATA 2 NUPHAR ADVENA

(Sweet scented Water Lily)(Yellow Pond-Lily)

(Spatter dock)

Nat. Ord. Nymphæaceæ.—(Gray.)