144 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



Botanists will have it that Ephedra is its only 

 proper name. It is a leafless mass of green stalks, 

 somewhat resembling equisetum or horsetail, and 

 in its season bears queer little brown. cones contain- 

 ing black seeds of unbelievable bitterness. In the 

 natural life of the desert Indian a decoction made 

 from the green or dried stalks was a sovereign tonic, 

 and it is still in such use by redman and white. 

 Then there is creosote bush the famous Larrea 

 Mexicana mentioned by every journal-keeping 

 pioneer that crossed the California deserts in pre- 

 railroad days. " Celebrated but totally useless," is 

 the way the botanist, John Torrey, handles it, "the 

 surest indication of a sterile, worthless soil that can 

 be found in the vegetable kingdom." 



We know now, however, that the soil in which it 

 grows is by no means sterile or worthless, and if 

 Torrey could visit the desert to-day he would find 

 planted to the fruits of civilization large areas for- 

 merly given over to the creosote bush. The new- 

 comer on the desert is pretty sure to notice this 

 shrub, never out of leaf, and bearing in its season a 

 pretty little yellow flower, to be followed by seed- 

 balls fuzzy and white. The shrubs grow at decent 

 intervals from one another, and look for all the world 

 as though they had been carefully set out by a 

 Scotch gardener, so that the wastes of their inhabit- 



