Naturalized Plants. 3^^ 



iti(«i 



naturalized, surviving but a short time when no longer protected, 

 and never found away from cultivation. On the islands, on the con- 

 trary, it is entirely at home, and at least on Santa Catalina, occu- 

 pied, within the memory of living men, a large part of the island^ 

 only yielding to the overstocking of it with sheep and goats. 



But the greatest difficulty is found in the fact that we have to ac- 

 count not for one " malva rosa," but for four. The tra(" ' 

 true, relates to but a single species, but it is admitted that the others 

 must receive the same disposal! Yet it can hardly be seriously sup- 

 posed that the Fathers, with commendable care to guard against 

 hybridizing, should have introduced each different species upon a 

 separate island, or group of islands, and have cultivated only one 

 of them about their own habitations. If to escape this difficulty it 

 is proposed, against the general consensus of botanists, to reduce 

 all to mere forms of a single species, the matter is scarcely bettered, 

 since it then follows that in little more than a hundred years on 

 each island has been differentiated from a common stock a form^ so 

 distinct as to deceive the best students into defining or accepting 

 them as good species. And this under conditions not very dissimi- 

 lar, while at the same time the plant common to the northern islands 

 and to continental cultivation, under conditions of greater variance, 



has remained fixed in type. 



But whether the species are one or four no European type or types 

 are suggested to which they are to be referred. Until these are ad- 

 duced, and the American Lavateras identified with them on botani- 

 cal o-rounds, it would seem needless further to consider this tradition 



of the Fathers. 



Oligomeris subulata. On the ground that this plant is a 

 Spanish migrant Gray and Hooker* exclude the Resedaceae from 

 the flora of the United States. In this opinion Dr. Watson has not 

 concurred, and classes the plant as indigenous in his Bibliographical 

 Index. Elsewhere he says that it is "seemingly Indigenous to 

 the United States,"! and that " it is difficult to account for the wide 

 spread of this plant, if of recent introduction, through a region so 

 desert and sparsely Inhabited."! It is commonly admitted to be 



* Veg. Rocky Mt. Region, 30 



tBot. Cal., i, 53. 



X Proc. Am. Acad., xi, io8. 



