Stems: leafy, glabrous, paniculately branched. Leaves: lower ones spatulate, obtuse, almost entire; upper ones sessile, linear, acute. Flowers: in loose racemes; calyx-tube turbinate, hemispheric, lobes lanceolate; corolla-tube straight, oblique, divided to the base on one side, two-lipped, irregularly five-lobed.

Those who are familiar with the cultivated garden species of Lobelia will easily recognize the mountain Brook Lobelia, which usually grows at the extreme edge of a stream, or half immersed in some warm wet swamp, where its grasslike stems bearing their racemes of sky-blue blossoms, spring up in little companies amongst the water-weeds, the Butter-worts, and the Fly-spotted Orchis.

Plate LVII

Brook Lobelia (Lobelia Kalmii)