VOL. ut.) Plants of Santa Clara. 127 
Fox’s Nursery to which it had certainly been introduced with seed 
or plants from the Eastern States or Europe. For the latter my 
borders are indebted to a dooryard at Watsonville, in which town 
this speedwell is quite a fixture. I have also seen it at Santa Cruz. 
E. peplus is not uncommon at Rochester, N. Y., where it is to be 
Seen occasionally on the inner edge of footways, oftener in yards 
and still more frequently in the nurseries and seed-growing grounds 
of several well-known firms. Of course, it is from these last that 
it has ventured beyond upon streets and private grounds. «It is not, 
however, a wanderer, for its seed is too heavy to travel far except 
by aid possibly of our feathered friends, or our own wet or muddy 
shoes. 
Though it is all over my yard I have never seen it upon the 
abutting streets, nor isit in Rochester anywhere away from the gar- 
den fence sides, so that I am disposed to think the birds have little 
if any liking for it. The plant is a bright little thing and matures 
its fruit so quickly that it is sure to leave one crop behind though 
the wet season that prompted its quittance of the seed state be but 
ashort one. Bauxbaum’s speedwell is quite as smart as the spurge 
at lengthening its stems, which are prostrate, at flowering and at 
seed sowing and is like it too, in its stay at home habit. 
Both these plants are doubtless in California to stay. The seed 
of thyme-leaved spurge, Exphorbia serpyllifolia, came to my yard 
in loam, with many other plants, from the river-side. This is so 
neat a thing, asks so few favors, and covers the earth at edges 
_of beds so attractively that I have encouraged it to stay though 
I will say but few hints in that direction were necessary. 
Another speedwell, sent me from Massachusetts ( . officinale ), 
does well on the north side of my house where it gets a part of the 
afternoon’s sun. The one plant I possess is two years old and 
covers two feet by three of surface, has recently flowered and at 
this writing, after three or four days of unusually warm weather, is 
apparently in as good a condition as anything within my palings. 
V. Americana is visible in spring in a roadside ditch two miles 
away, where later appear Botsduvallia densiflora, Eryngium pe- 
tiolatum and Mimuluses cardinalis and luteus. 
A half mile beyond, upon this same road—the Kifer—there is a 
station of the Philadelphia fleabane, (Zrigeron Philadelphicus), and 
upon the Homestead road, and again as we near Saratoga village, 
