VOL. I] Naturalized Plants. 9 
fusion since it appears to be able to thrive under a greater variety 
of conditions. It is worth noting that it is to the plant-eradicating 
sheep, which has wrought such destruction to our native flora, that 
California probably owes the introduction of its most valuable and 
abundant forage plants, namely, alfileria, bur-clover and wild oats, 
and that all are of Mediterranean origin. 
Silene Gallica is another foothill plant, although not restricted to 
a particular soil. It is a companion of S. antirrhina and has as 
much appearance of being indigenous as that species. Both are far 
from rare, and are thoroughly at home on rough hillsides and the 
steep banks of cafions quite removed from cultivation, and I have 
never observed it in fields or by waysides, where one expects to 
find intruders. The former species, however, is put down in the 
books as an exotic. But one who observed its habits here would 
certainly never suspect that it was not indigenous, and I am dis- 
posed to exclude it from the catalogue of our introduced plants. 
A third habitant of the foothills is the ‘‘Lady’s Mantle” of 
Europe, Alchemilla arvensis. his delicate little herb is very 
abundant in early spring on clayey slopes, usually seeking the par- 
‘tial shelter of open growths of Adenostoma and other shrubs. 
Although an introduced species in the Atlantic States, it is here 
evidently indigenous. i 
I am also disposed to claim a native origin for Apium graveolens, 
although it is always noted as the opposite. Brewer and Watson 
state of this ‘‘ Wild Celery ” that it is “ rare in California, but has 
been collected in salt marshes from Santa Barbara to San Diego, 
and also at Fort Tejon.”* Coulter and Rose} add another station, 
San Bernardino. It is, in fact, common enough throughout this 
region, abounding on wet meadows and by stream banks. It has. 
no more appearance of a foreign origin than has Ginanthe sarmen- 
tosa, with which it is frequently associated. So widely diffused and 
well established a plant, if introduced at all, must have gotten its 
start in Spanish times. Now the cultivation of celery as a vegetable 
indicates a far more advanced state of the gardener’s art than ex- 
isted at the ranchos and missions of that period. The seed also is 
one that very soon loses its vitality, which diminishes the chances 
of the vegetating of an accidental sowing. Considering then the 
*Bot. Cal. I, 258. tRev. Umbell, 124. 
