IN CALIFORNIA 273 



heliotrope and nasturtiums, among tenderer sorts. 

 Of shrubs and vines, I noted blooming in mid-Janu- 

 ary of the present year (an average season) in the 

 general vicinity of Los Angeles, about twenty dif- 

 ferent sorts. No doubt there were many more that 

 I did not happen to see, while sea-coast places like 

 San Diego and Santa Barbara, where more equable 

 conditions prevail, would perhaps show even more. 

 Among garden shrubs that caught my eye were 

 not to speak of roses the showy Choisya ternata 

 and abutilon, Aloe arboreus with scarlet racemes 

 erect like glowing pokers, and the camellia's ex- 

 quisite waxen roses in red and white ; the New Zea- 

 land veronica with blue, bristly spikes, the fragrant 

 daphne of Japan (a large bush in many gardens) ; 

 the Formosan rice-paper plant (Fatsia papyrifera), 

 with its tropical foliage and creamy white flower 

 panicles ; and Oestrum elegans with its slender fun- 

 nels of bloom in drooping magenta clusters. The 

 orange trumpets of Bignonia venusta fringed some 

 bungalow-eaves and pergola beams, and scarlet 

 tecomas and Bougainvilleas of various hues twined 

 themselves over others. Arbutus unedo, the Euro- 

 pean strawberry tree, was in certain gardens a little 

 show to itself, the same individual bearing flowers, 

 green fruit, and red mature "strawberries." The 

 berries, by the way, though very ornamental, are a 



