EARLY SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITIONS TO CALIFORNIA. 189 
favorable to vegetation . . . The trees of the forest are the 
stone-pine, the cypress, the evergreen oak, and the western 
plane-tree; there is’no underwood, and a sward upon which it 
is very agreeable to walk covers the ground of the forest.” The 
gardener of the expedition furnished him the common names 
of various indigenous and cultivated plants of which he 
mentions the following: Common absinthe, littoral absinthe, 
abrotanum, artemisia, Mexican tea, golden-rod of Canada, 
aster, milfoil, nightshade with the black fruit, samphire or 
sea-fennel, and water-mint. 
The botanists of the expedition were Martiniere and 
Collignon. “From the day of our arrival,” says La Perouse, 
“our botanists lost not a moment in augmenting their collec- 
tion of plants, but the season [September] was not favorable; 
the heat of the summer had entirely dried everything, and 
the seeds were scattered upon the earth.” ‘From this it seems 
likely that the collection was not a large one. In any event, 
the botanists were permitted to send home with the 
dispatches a limited number of seeds and dried plants. They 
undoubtedly selected what they regarded as new and most 
remarkable. Two of the packets of seeds thus sent were 
gathered at Monterey. The seeds of one packet were sown 
in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and produced a number 
of “beautiful herbaceous plants.” This species was first 
observed by Jussieu who recognized it as belonging to his 
order Nyctagines and made for it a new genus which he 
called Abronia, a full diagnosis being given in his Genera, 
published at Paris, in 1789. Two years later Lamarck in his 
Illustrations gave to the new plant its specific name wmbellata. 
Abronia umbellata, collected by Collignon at Monterey, is 
the earliest described Californian plant. It is one of the 
most characteristic and abundant of the native denizens of 
our sea-shore from the Columbia River to San Diego. 
1 The seeds of the other packet came with herbarium specimens of a pine collected 
at Monterey by Gollipnon: Previously to its — on the Californian coast the 
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