170 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



There is a familiar bracken which makes a luxuri- 

 ant, weedy growth in the sunny forests of much of 

 California, and spreads itself like an angel of heal- 

 ing over areas that forest fires have blasted. It 

 grows sometimes, notably in the north, to the height 

 of six or eight feet and takes such complete posses- 

 sion of the ground as to put a bar to progress even 

 on horseback. While to the non-scientific, it seems 

 the same bracken as luxuriates in hillside thickets 

 and dry fields throughout the East as well as in 

 Europe the bracken of literature, of Tennyson and 

 Sir Walter it is really a distinct variety, possess- 

 ing a marked downiness of the fronds, which acts, 

 doubtless, to retard evaporation in the dry atmos- 

 phere of its far western home. Botanists call it 

 Pteris aquilina lanuginosa the downy brake. The 

 roots had some food value in the view of the Sierra 

 Indians, and in Northern California they are used 

 to some extent in coarse basket work ; while the large 

 leathery fronds, according to Chesnut, serve excel- 

 lently in Indian hands for beating down grass fires. 



The tallness of the bracken is rivaled by only one 

 other California fern, the noble Woodwardia radi- 

 cans, which in situations to its liking, as in the 

 depths of moist, shaded canons and in places where 

 springs issue, grows in tropical luxuriance. It is 

 a confirmed buveur d' eau, and is always found with 



