14 CALIFORNIA GARDEN FLOWERS. 



and water falls or flows, in which a home need be bare of beautiful 

 foliage and flower: that there is no local climate, be its distinctive 

 character desert fire or mountain frost, which does not cherish lovely 

 plants, that between these extremes, each of which sets its own limits 

 on plant growth, are the great expanses of California valleys and foot- 

 hills, throughout which perennial mildness prevails in such varying 

 degrees that broad leafed evergreens may rule the landscape in one 

 place and be practically absent in another and yet the tenderest de- 

 ciduous and herbaceous perennials be seasonably safe in both and 

 have a growing season each year about thrice the duration of their 

 dormancy. 



What the Wild Plants Think of California. There are two ways 

 in which we can demonstrate the horticultural quality of the climates 

 of California by reference to the plants themselves. 



First. Continuing the Edenic suitability of California suggested in 

 the preceding chapter, it may be claimed that the native plants by their 

 superior numbers of unique and characteristic species testify the ap- 

 preciation in which this state is held in the plant world. Of course we 

 must go to the botanists for interpretations of such evidence. Dr. W. 

 L. Jepson of the University of California has said this: 



"California is one of the botanical sub-provinces of the earth 

 which is remarkable for the number of endemic species which it con- 

 tains. The California area, perhaps the Sonoran-zone part of it, has 

 been a vast breeding ground for species. Of the 4000 species in Cali- 

 fornia, probably about one-third are endemic in the Cali- 

 fornia area; Great Britain, with half the area of California has about 

 1400 flowering plant species and not one of them indisputably endemic. 

 Scandinavia, with about twice the area of California has 1380 flowering 

 plant species and very few endemic. The region covered by Gray's 

 Manual of Botany (east of the Mississippi, from Tennessee northward 

 to Hudsons Bay), has 3413 species against 4000 in California, with 

 only one-sixth of the area. 



"There is greater degree of relationship between the flora of the 

 Pacific Coast and Europe, than there is between the flora of the 

 Atlantic Coast and Europe. The relationship of the California flora 

 as a whole are more strongly with the European Mediterranean flora 

 than that of any other region. While there are practically no species 

 in common the number of generic types and orders in common is very 

 considerable and very significant in character." * 



Thus it appears that the native plants testify to our wide variations 

 in climates, which range from Alpine summits to the shores of sunlit 

 seas, and the botanical resemblance to the Mediterranean flora includes 



* In part from an address before the Sigma Xi society, Berkeley, February 25, 

 1914 (unpublished). 



