Stem. - Slender, branching, one or two feet high. Leaves. - Opposite, ovate, lance-shaped, partly clasping. Flowers. - Pale blue, smaller than those of the closed gentian, in clusters of about five at the summit of stems and branches. Calyx. - Four or five-cleft, small. Corolla. - Funnel-form, four or five-lobed', its lobes bristle-pointed. Stamens. - Four or five. Pistil. - One, with two stigmas.

Although the five-flowered gentian is far less frequently encountered than the closed gentian, it is very common in certain localities. Gray assigns it to "moist hills" and "along the mountains to Florida." I have found it growing in great abundance on the Shawangunk Mountains in Orange County, N. Y., where it flowers in September.