IN CALIFORNIA 265 



These vines, which clamber over half the summer 

 houses and pergolas of Southern California, com- 

 memorate in their rather formidable name, one 

 Louis Antoine de Bougainville, a French soldier and 

 sailor of distinction in the service of Louis the Fif- 

 teenth and Well Beloved King of France under Du 

 Barry and Pompadour. De Bougainville was an 

 aide-de-camp of Montcalm's at the battle of Quebec, 

 and a gentleman of cultivated taste. Later as com- 

 mander of a French frigate with a transport to bear 

 it company, he circumnavigated the globe in leis- 

 urely fashion, taking three years to the trip 

 (1766-69) and was the first French navigator to per- 

 form the feat. He made extensive explorations in 

 the South Pacific, a description of which may be 

 read in his entertaining " Voyage autour du Monde" 

 published in Paris in 1771. The species of Bou- 

 gainvillea in cultivation are natives of tropical and 

 sub-tropical parts of eastern South America, nota- 

 bly Brazil, from which country the species most 

 usually cultivated have come. De Bougainville in 

 his voyage touched at Buenos Ayres, but his floral 

 namesake seems not to have been introduced into 

 Europe until about sixty years later. 



One is not long among California gardens before 

 making acquaintance with those curious floral 

 groundlings the mesembryanthemums. They are 



