188 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



is common in old California gardens, and was for- 

 merly extensively planted for windbreaks about the 

 Orientals' market gardens near San Francisco. 



"Some say the Franciscan fathers planted the 

 first seeds of malva rosa in California, because it 

 grew in Spain and they loved to have in the Mis- 

 sion gardens the plants that reminded them of home, 

 for they must often have been lonesome here in the 

 wilderness, the poor padres. But other people say, 

 no ; it did not come from Spain, but from the islands 

 near Santa Barbara and it grows wild there. So I 

 do not know how the truth of it may be; but it is 

 here now and a pretty flower, no?" 



And here in our ramble we came to a row of callas 

 unwinding their lovely horns of snowy purity. The 

 Spanish genius for graphic and picturesque nomen- 

 clature is strikingly illustrated in the word which 

 Dona Margarita gave me for this coddling of east- 

 ern greenhouses, but which often runs wild in Cali- 

 fornia. 



"Corneta, we call it," she said, "a music horn 

 as you say in English. It is nice flowers, I think, 

 and always the gardens have them to decorate the 

 altar at the church. Often in the cienagas they 

 grow wild, too, and I mind a place near San Gabriel 

 where they one time grew along a zanja an irriga- 

 tion ditch, you know for the longest distance, just 



