THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 29 



less showy in the sunshine with fluffy balls of pappused seed 

 poising for flight. 



A composite characteristic of the deserts of Eastern Cali- 

 fornia, not infrecjuent in the sandy washes of the hills near 

 Pasadena and which makes a bright show in the September 

 sunshine, is Lepidospartuni squamatviui. It would be a boon 

 if someone would give it an easy common name, for it is too 

 much to expect the non-botanical to be interested in a name 

 like that. It groA\s in clumps, the mass of stiff, green branches 

 being leafless like so many dormant sticks, but when the flow- 

 ers appear — rayless but the disks a vivid yellow — the bushes 

 are changed, as by a Midas touch, to gold. Unfortunately for 

 the posy gatherer, the plant exhales an insidious, disagreeable 

 odor not unlike soap-fat. and a glorious bunch that I picked 

 for home decoration on the day of my first accjuaintance with 

 the flower, had to be dropped as soon as plucked. 



Another beautiful composite that blooms only after the 

 dry season is well under way. is Scnccio Doiiglasii, whose 

 graceful, lemon-yellow blossoms, the size of half a dollar, 

 surmount a plant as graceful with grayish green, finely cut 

 foliage. But showiest of all the composites is the sunflower — 

 the same Hclianthus annuus that forests the levels of the 

 Middle ^\'est with its stout, arboreal stems and supplied the 

 old time Indians with fuel, food and hair oil. Out here on 

 the Pacific Slope, it makes cheerful thickets along washes and 

 by neglected roadsides, but I have never seen it attain the 

 luxuriant growth it reaches in Kansas and Nebraska 

 "sloughs,'' where it overtops a man on horseback. 



Besides composites — and there are many more of such 

 dry weather lovers than I have space to enumerate — there are 

 now abloom several interesting plants of other orders. One 

 that fairly dyes the dry plains blue in many spots is a species 

 of blue curls {Trichostciua lanccolatiim) — a bushy annual 

 with the curious curled stamens so prominent in the Eastern 



