_Apocynum androsæmifolium_, L. Dogbane Family.
Erect; one to three feet high; spreading. _Leaves._--Opposite; short-petioled; ovate or roundish; an inch or two long. _Flowers._--Clustered; pink. _Calyx._--Five-cleft. _Corolla._--Campanulate; three or four lines long; with five revolute lobes; having a small scale at base, opposite each lobe. _Stamens._--Five; on the corolla. Filaments short. Anthers erect around the stigma. Style none. _Ovaries._--Two; becoming a pair of long pods. Seeds silky-tufted. _Hab._--Widely distributed in the United States.
[Illustration BEAUTIFUL CLARKIA--_Clarkia concinna_.]
The small pink flowers of the spreading dogbane may be found all through the summer, often upon our driest hillsides. The shapely little blossoms are of a flesh-tint without, richly veined with deeper pink within, and quite fragrant. The plants have a milky juice and a tough fiber in the stem, similar to that in the American-Indian hemp. The plant was formerly supposed to be poisonous to dogs, from which fact it received its generic name, which translated gives the common English name, "dogbane." It is used in medicine as a remedy for rheumatic gout. The very long pods seem absurdly out of proportion to the small flowers.
_A. cannabinum_, L., the American-Indian hemp, is also found within our borders, but it grows along stream-banks and in marshy places. It has oblong, pointed leaves, and small greenish-white flowers, only two lines long, whose close cylindrical corollas hardly surpass the calyx. The yellowish-brown bark of this plant is very tough and fibrous, and at the same time soft and silky. Our Indians have always found it of the utmost value in the making of ropes, lariats, nets, mats, baskets, etc., and before the coming of the white man they even made certain articles of clothing of it. A tincture made from the root is a recognized drug in the pharmacopœia. Professor Thouin, of Paris, says that a permanent dye may be obtained from a decoction of it, which is brown or black, according to the mordant used.
_Leaves._--Grasslike, a foot or two long. _Scape._--One to three feet high; six- to fifteen-flowered. _Perianth._--An inch or two long; rich crimson; the limb of six green or yellowish oblong lobes. _Stamens._--Three; on the perianth. Filaments adnate to its tube. Anther tips exserted. _Staminodia._--Three; broad; short; white; on the throat of the perianth, alternating with the stamens. _Ovary._--Three-celled. Style exserted. Stigma three-lobed. _Syn._--_Brevoortia coccinea_, Wats. _Hab._--The mountains from Mendocino County to Shasta County.