61 



THE PLANT-INHABITANTS OF NOB HILL, SAN 

 FRANCISCO. 



By Alice Eastwood. 



When the rains terminate the long dry season in California, it 

 is not winter, that they usher in, though the season is so called. 

 The time of rest for plants is not to begin then but to end. To 

 the cotyledons wrapped up in the tiny seeds, to the buds folded 

 carefully in their scaly coverings on the woody stems of shrubs and 

 trees or buried beneath the earth in various disguising forms, the 

 first rain-drops whisper that the time of awakening is approaching. 

 Soon the brown landscape of summer suddenly becomes green, a 

 tender green, misty, as if it belonged to the atmosphere rather than 

 to the earth. A close view discovers the surface of the ground 

 inhabited by innumerable tiny strangers, baby-plants clothed in 

 their first leaves,- delicate, beautiful little beings whose individual 

 existence is seldom recognized, but whose presence has made for us 

 a new world. 



At all times of the year green and blooming plants can be found 

 on our hills and in our valleys. It is impossible to assign a definite 

 time to mark the last of the summer -flowers and the first of those 

 of spring. When on a January ramble we can find golden-rod 

 and aster, trillium and iris, in the same neighborhood, winter seems 

 lost and spring and fall most uncertain. These lingering stragglers 

 of summer and early arrivals of spring bridge over the chasm that 

 winter makes in less favored climes; but spring comes in with a 

 rush that is undreamed of in countries, where "winter lingers in the 

 lap of spring." 



Not alone the unfrequented hills and valleys show the wonderful 

 effect of moisture ; the busy streets of the city, also, become tinged 

 with green. The cobble-stones afford protection to many a tiny 

 plant even where the traffic is considerable ; while on the hills that 

 are too steep to permit anything except the cable-cars being hauled 

 up and down, a wilderness of plants appear, often so dense as to 

 conceal the cobble-stones beneath. It is refreshing amid so much, 

 that is dirty, shabby^ and ugly in the city- streets, to behold these 



Erythea, Vol. VI, No. 6 [27 June, 1898]. 



