BOTANY OF SANTA CRUZ ISLAND. 377 



STUDIES IN THE BOTANY OF CALIFORNIA AND PARTS 

 ADJACENT. 



BY EDWARD LEE GREENE. 



YI. 



1. Notes on the Botany of Santa Cruz Island. 



Santa Cruz is one of the principal nnits in a succession of 

 eight islands which lie along the Coast of California south 

 of Point Conception. xA.ll but two or three of the smaller 

 members of the group are near enough to the mainland to 

 be plainly visible on a clear day; and the arrival at anyone 

 of them, except the two or three most remote, is only a 

 matter of an afternoon's sail from one or another of the 

 mainland seaport towns of that part of the State. To peo- 

 ple who know something of the special interest which at- 

 taches to insular natural history in general, it may seem 

 strange that, while the mainland botany of California has^ 

 been, during the last thirty years, assiduously cultivated by 

 many collectors, amateurs and professional botanists, these 

 large islands, so near at hand, have been left until recently 

 quite unexplored. Eemoved as they are to hardly more 

 than a song bird's flight from the California Coast Range 

 of mountains, it may have been inferred that their vegeta- 

 tion would be altogether that of the mainland; and that the 

 scientific exploration of no one of them would be likely to 

 repay the possible discomforts of a day's sail across the 

 channel and a week's encampment on ground so rugged,, 

 and withal so barren looking as all these island steeps ap- 

 pear when viewed from a distance of twenty or thirty miles. 



But the few fragments of positive botanical information 

 which did, years ago, come in from one and another of the 

 group, were sufficient to indicate the probability of many 

 interesting peculiarities in their flora. Some forty-four 

 years ago Mr. William Gambel of Philadelphia, an ornithol- 



