OPEN LETTERS. 147 
There remain many remarkable and handsome novelties 
indigenous to the Pacific Slope, which would greatly enrich 
the herbaceous-border, rock-garden or temperate-house of 
European lovers of plants, and which only await the fore- 
sight and capital of enterprising nurserymen to be made 
available. Travelling is still very expensive in this region 
(3 cents a mile and upwards, by railroad) and the area 
included in the coast States very great, much greater 
evidently, than Europeans and even dwellers in the eastern 
States realize; nevertheless the rapid increase of population 
and consequent increase in facilities for travel renders the 
work of exploration, collection and transport comparatively 
easy, and far less costly than in many other countries, 
especially if resident collectors, well acquainted with 
western life, are employed. While annuals form a large 
proportion of the showy spring flowers of the coast plains, 
there is also a rich abundance of perennial species. 
OPEN LETTERS. 
The following letter is in answer to an inquiry respecting 
the folk-name “gietta grass” and the identification of the 
plant to which it is applied. 
San BERNARDINO, CALIFoRNIA, Sept. 15, 1895. 
Your favor inquiring about the desert grass called gietta 
grass is received. The name as given in Bot. Calif. (ii. 293) 
is Pleuraphis rigida, but later it has been named by 
Haeckel Hilaria rigida. It is true desert grass, never 
growing elsewhere. It is excellent fodder, not only “mules” 
but horses and cattle preferring it to any other wild or culti- 
vated plant, I believe. It is the grass often spoken of by 
desert men as being “cut with a hoe,” as it is s0 woody 
(apparently) and brittle that a hoe is the ordinary tool used 
in gathering it. Teams coming in from the desert often have 
