Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 August 1893 — Our Most Remarkable Plant. [ARTICLE]

Our Most Remarkable Plant.

The most remarkable plant found growing in the United States is that fragile and paradoxioal wonder, tho “ snow plant ” of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It is known to the botanist as saroodes sanguines, meaning “ bloody or blooded flesh.” Nothing in the giant line was ever more exquisitely beautiful than this rosy, snow - tinted botanical oddity, which has been likened to a crowned hyacinth. It grows to a height of from eight-to twenty inches, each separate bract, sepal and mi nature bell being frosted as delicately as though done by the ice king himself. Although the whole translucent spike is flushed with rose and carmine, the petals are the richest and most brilliant parts of the flower, which is five-parted, each open bell plainly disclosing the little frosted stamens and pistils. Floriculturists of the Pacific slope have made many unsuccessful attempts to cultivate the new plant, the bulbs being too brittle to stand transplanting and the seeds refusing to grow. Botanists once gave it as their opinion that the plant would not survive below the line of perpetual snow, but this idea has lately been proven erroneous. One thing is certain, however, it makes its early growth while covered with many feet of snow, blooming as soon as the icy covering is penetrated.—[Troy Press.