By the end of this month, most of
the species had ripened their seeds, but undecayed, still seemed to be
in bloom from the numerous corolla-like involucres and whorls of chaffy
scales of the composite. In May, the bees found in flower only a few
deep-set liliaceous plants and eriogonums.
June, July, August, and September is the season of rest and sleep,--a
winter of dry heat,--followed in October by a second outburst of bloom
at the very driest time of the year. Then, after the shrunken mass of
leaves and stalks of the dead vegetation crinkle and turn to dust
beneath the foot, as if it had been baked in an oven, _Hemizonia
virgata_, a slender, unobtrusive little plant, from six inches to three
feet high, suddenly makes its appearance in patches miles in extent,
like a resurrection of the bloom of April. I have counted upward of 3000
flowers, five eighths of an inch in diameter, on a single plant. Both
its leaves and stems are so slender as to be nearly invisible, at a
distance of a few yards, amid so showy a multitude of flowers. The ray
and disk flowers are both yellow, the stamens purple, and the texture of
the rays is rich and velvety, like the petals of garden pansies.
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