[Illustration WILD HELIOTROPE--_Phacelia tanacetifolia_.]
_Sisyrinchium bellum_, Wats. Iris Family.
_Leaves._--Radical; grasslike; shorter than the stems. _Stems._--Flat; clustered; six to eighteen inches high. _Flowers._--Four to seven; contained in two nearly equal sheathing bracts. _Perianth._--Six-parted; purplish-blue, with yellow center; six lines to an inch across. _Stamens._--Three. Filaments united. _Ovary._--Three-celled. Style filiform. Stigma spindle-shaped; three-cleft after fertilization. _Hab._--Throughout California.
The blue-eyed grass is such a modest flower, one would never suspect it to be closely allied to the regal _Iris_. In late spring its quiet stars are found in our meadows everywhere. In the south it grows so luxuriantly and so determinedly that it has become a serious pest to the farmer, crowding more useful plants from the pasture.
Owing to the quaint manner in which its petals kink up when they fade, these blossoms are called "nigger-babies" by the children. Among the Spanish-Californians the plant is known as "azulea" and "villela," and is made into a tea, which is considered a valuable remedy in fevers. It is thought that a patient can subsist for many days upon it alone.
_S. Californicum_, Ait., the "golden-eyed grass," with bright yellow flowers, is found in wet places all up and down the Coast.
_Nemophila intermedia_, Bioletti. Baby-eyes or Waterleaf Family.
_Leaves._--With petioles somewhat widened at base and ciliate; the upper all opposite. _Corolla._--Nine to twelve lines wide; light blue to white; distinctly blue-veined or more or less sown with purple dots. Scales of the corolla long, narrow, hairy, with expanded tips extending nearly to the sinuses. _Ovary._--Rounded; with twelve to twenty-four ovules. (Otherwise as _N. insignis_.) _Syn._--_Nemophila Menziesii_, Hook. and Arn. _Hab._--Rather widespread.
[Illustration BLUE-EYED GRASS--_Sisyrinchium bellum_.]
This beautiful _Nemophila_ is a more fragile flower than its sister, the baby-blue-eyes. Its delicate corolla is usually white in the center, blending to azure-blue upon the rim, and dotted and veined with the same. At its best, it is an inch across. It affects the borders of moist woodlands, rarely venturing far out into the openings. There it nestles amid the tender herbage, often producing its ethereal flowers in such profusion that it seems as though bits of the sky had fallen to earth. In the south these blossoms do not seem so truly at home--for they are never so large nor so fine.