94 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



cies known to botanists as Brodiaea capitata, com- 

 mon throughout the State, forms an important part 

 of the stock of itinerant wild flower venders at tour- 

 ist resorts. Country children have a way of call- 

 ing it wild onion, which is more accurate than some 

 common names, for its bulbous root is edible and 

 the plant is really related to the garden onion. A 

 more poetic appellation, which may be preferred by 

 people who stumble at the rather difficult word 

 brodiaea (given, by the way, in memory of one James 

 L. Brodie a Scotch botanist of long ago), is the 

 term by which the species is known in cultivation 

 California hyacinth. Brodiaeas are indigenous only 

 to our Pacific Coast and are of many rather diverse 

 kindsr The flowers of one species (Brodiaa coc- 

 cinea), native to Northern California, are scarlet. 

 In size and shape they resemble Chinese fire-crack- 

 ers, which they further suggest by the limp way 

 the clustered blooms droop from the top of the 

 stem. This fire-cracker flower, as it is popularly 

 called, is one of the most curious in the wild flora 

 of California, and has been the means of enlivening 

 the dry annals of science with a bit of sentiment, 

 which Thomas Meehan has preserved in "The Na- 

 tive Flowers and Ferns of the United States." It 

 seems the first botanist to notice the plant was Al- 

 phonso Wood, to whom it was pointed out in 1867 



