IN CALIFORNIA 99 



its color not only to the flowers but to the rosy- 

 tipped bracts that enclose them. Because of the 

 bunching of the blossoms in long bushy spikes, not 

 unlike small whisks, the Spanish inhabitants have 

 given them the name of escobitas, or little brooms. 

 To Americans they are more often known as owl's 

 clover a much less obvious name, which I am quite 

 at a loss to account for. Possibly to the vision of 

 the burrowing owls which frequent its haunts, the 

 showy heads of bloom may pass for red-clover tops, 

 but as a matter of fact, the plant is not at all akin 

 to the clover. It is a near cousin to the castilleias, 

 or Indian paint-brushes, whose spikes of scarlet- 

 bracted flowers flame vividly in the cienagas and 

 thickets, and on the sun-scorched slopes of the later 

 year. 



One spring noon on the mesa, as the Professor 

 and I discussed a brace of sandwiches by a tinkling 

 rill, fringed with watercresses, he relieved himself 

 of a jeremiad. 



"A humiliating fact in connection with our Cali- 

 fornia wild flowers," he remarked, struggling with 

 a bit of gristle in the meat, "is the average Cali- 

 fornian's own indifference to them. Not only does 

 he not know their names, he does not even see them, 

 as he slashes right and left in his haste to subdi- 

 vide the State into building lots and orange ranches. 



