THE ISLAND OF SAN CLEMENTE 153 



doubtless extend far down its slopes and afford homes 

 for countless fishes, shell-fishes, and other denizens of 

 the sea. 



No botanist has gone over the ground of the islands 

 so conscientiously as Mrs. Blanche Trask of Avalon, 

 who has given a most interesting account* of many 

 plants which she found on San Clemente. She found 

 a new rattleweed (Astragalus roheartsii, Eastwood), 

 which she has named in honor of Johnny Robearts, 

 who lived on San Clemente twenty years, and knew 

 it intelligently and well; and in Chalk Cliff Canon a 

 tree daisy, Encelia California. Out on the points she 

 found Euphorbia miser a; but the rarest find was a 

 species of Lycium richii. For many years one of these 

 plants, a veritable giant, grew on the Avalon arroyo, 

 and was known as the "banyan"; by any other name 

 it was just as rare and interesting. Thousands of 

 people visited it, and it was famous as the only plant 

 of the kind in the United States. It was a sort of 

 shrine for botanists, — an extraordinary tree or bush 

 related to the currant family, a maze of branches, — a 

 botanical wonder that has gone the way of the abo- 

 rigines whose children may have played in its deep 

 interstices. I saw it first in 1886, and it was doubt- 

 less very old then. Mrs. Trash's discovery of one 

 more specimen at San Clemente, Northwest Harbor, 

 is an event, and it is to be hoped that it will be pre- 

 served from the fate of the Avalon specimen. 



Mrs. Trask reports from here a new species of Bac- 

 charis. Here, too, she found Trash's lotus, L. Tras- 

 ki(B, named for her, and many more. 



*In the Bulletin of the Southern California Academy of Sciences, May 

 and June, 1904. 



