NOTES ON INTRODUCED PLANTS OF SANTA CLARA. 
BY B. FRANK LEEDS. 
Rumex acetosella is a lively plant at Santa Cruz, both in irrigated - 
lawns and in fields that are quite beyond the reach of water in sum- 
mer. Single plants of it seen by me in 1883 on the narrow-gauge 
railroad, a third or half a mile from the town station, were as much 
as 30 inches across and half as high, exhibiting hundreds of branches 
and thousands of leaves, all of which came from one central stem 
and root, and not from a number of radiating underground stems. 
Such plants I never met with elsewhere, and supposed them to 
show the results of two or three years’ continuous growth, free 
from disturbance by track-cleaning employees, the passing boy and 
the tramp, who seem, for some unguessable reason, to have avoided 
them. Here in Santa Clara I have knowledge of but one specimen 
of this species, and that is—or was until my last attempt to destroy 
it—between planks of the broad - gauge station platform. For two 
or three years I have kept it from maturing seed, but the inaccess- 
ible root doubtless still remains alive. 
At San Jose I saw this Rumex once in lawn grass, and several 
days since noticed it near the station at Los Gatos—only one plant, _ 
which should have been lifted and destroyed, but the thought to do 
so did not come to me until too late. a 
Franseria tenuifolia is, according to the Brewer, Watson and Gray 
Bot. of Cal., a native of the southeastern corner of the State, ex- 
tending thence beyond the State line southwardly and eastwardly. 
This species has, somehow, reached Santa Clara. About three 
years ago I observed it covering thirty or more lengthwise feet of 
_ surface along the fence of a cultivated lot and a parallel line of it in 
the adjoining street gutter, where it had evidently been for some 
time. : 
Bits of root were transferred to my yard, where they have thriven 
finely, and still continue, but need frequent pruning, both above — 
and below ground, to keep within bounds. This is another spreader | 
by underground stems. Its usual hight is, perhaps, not over three 
or four feet, but in the frequently moistened soil about my house its 
a rough and grayish stem has reached quite eight — 
eet. 
Eighteen months ago the same species appeared at the Santa | 
