IN CALIFORNIA 271 



Unlike lippia, which is essentially a ground dweller, 

 Ficus repens is a born climber, and once started its 

 ambition knows no limits. Stone walls and board 

 fences, gate posts and window boxes, houses of 

 whatever material to the topmost chimney pot, tree 

 trunks into the very crown, become in time plastered 

 with the industrious little vine, whose leathery 

 leaves a rich sober green in age are in youth rosy 

 hued and golden- tinged, as youth's outlook should 

 be. Altogether it is, I think, as charming a plant 

 as Dickens thought the ivy green, and strange as it 

 may seem, it is really a fig, near akin to that great 

 tree which casts protecting arms over so many Cali- 

 fornia homes. I never realized this relationship, 

 however, until one day my eye caught sight of a 

 branch bearing fruit, which is not often noticed. 

 It was in shape and general make-up quite like a fig, 

 but the seedy interior lacked the sweet juiciness of 

 the edible species. 



The unbridled rhetoric of much of California's 

 advertising literature would make the reader think 

 that the gardens of the State are a perpetual riot of 

 bloom. Having wintered and summered one for 

 several years and watched my neighbors ' for rather 

 longer, I am inclined to think the Horatian maxim 

 about people changing their sky but not their spirit, 

 holds pretty well for plant life too. Plants need 



