The Plant World 



A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF POPULAR BOTANY. 



Vol. l may, 1898. No. 8. 



THE ELEPHANT TREE. 

 By F. H. Kiioivlton. 



THE Peninsula of Lower California is essentially a desert, a con- 

 dition brought about by a very slight annual rain-fall and an 

 almost total absence of permanent water from its sandy and 

 rocky wastes. The heat is intense and prolonged, and as a 

 result of these conditions the vegetation is scant and of such form as 

 will best conserve the precious moisture. The cacti of various forms, 

 and spiny, nearly leafless shrubs are the dominant elements, and the 

 effects produced are said to be strange and weird in the extreme. 



Of all the curious floral forms growing in this area, perhaps none 

 is more remarkable in many respects than the so-called Elephant Tree 

 ( VeatcJiia discolor). This is a huge, distorted shrub or low tree, from 

 ten to twenty-five feet in height, with a short trunk sometimes two feet 

 in diameter, and low, tortuous, widely spreading branches. Follow- 

 ing is the description written by Mr. Hinds, the botanist of H. M. S. 

 Sulphu)\ who discovered the tree about 1840: " I have also seen some 

 attempts at trees; imagine what the bones and muscles of a giant 

 would be distorted into three feet; such looked these trees. They 

 twisted and twirled, but could not assume the erect position. Their 

 diameters were fa,r from inconsiderable." Dr. John A. Veatch, in 

 whose honor the genus is named, and who observed and collected it 

 about 1859 on Cedros Island, has the following complete account of it: 

 *'The Elephant Tree is one of the curiosities of Cedros Island. It 

 derives its name from the elephantine proportions of its sturdy, 

 •heavy looking trunk and branches. The main trunk of a full grown 

 tree will probably average two feet in diameter, the height being but 

 little more, and often less than the diameter. In some favorable 

 situations I observed a few that reached an elevation of six feet; this 

 was, however, an unusual occurrence. The trunk divides into several 

 ponderous branches that shoot off horizontally, and are bent and con- 



