WHY CALIFORNIA PLEASES MANY PLANTS 15 



of course the Riviera and all the earlier exemplars of etheral mildness 

 of which poets, prophets and historians have testified since the birth 

 of the race. Thus again we approach the Edenic argument. 



What Introduced Plants Declare. In adducing the testimony of 

 the plants to the horticultural adaptations of our California climates, 

 there come the introductions of man as supplementing creative dis- 

 tribution, therefore 



Second. The instance given in the preceding chapter of the col- 

 lections of exotics at Santa Barbara is a token of similar achievements, 

 in varying degrees, in other parts of the state. This fact is apparent 

 to any distant person who may read the lists of plants offered by our 

 nurserymen for planting in the open air for they are largely the 

 growths prescribed for green houses in all wintry parts of the world. 

 It is also clear to any appreciative visitor, even be he unskilled in 

 plants, who notes for a moment the wide range of hues and forms 

 which can be seen wherever any attempt has been made to indulge in 

 ornamentals. Our conditions lie in that most happy climatic region 

 known as the sub-tropical, or semi-tropical, where we may install, for 

 superior growth, the characteristic vegetation of the temperate zone, 

 add to it a wealth of new forms and colors from the borders of the 

 strictly tropical region, and draw from even beneath the equator itself 

 plants which thrive there upon certain elevations. It is true, of course, 

 that California cannot afford an out-door home for plants which 

 thrive only in the humid heat of the tropical coasts, but we have 

 little reason to mourn our limitations in this respect. We gain more 

 from our affiliation with ordinary temperate latitudes than we can 

 possibly lose by our unfitness for plants from tropical jungles. 



What the Plant Grower Should Try to Learn. Although the 

 climates of California are so strikingly suitable to plant growth, as 

 the plants themselves declare, it must be admitted that there are great 

 variations of conditions within narrow distances which the plant 

 grower must try to learn largely by observation of plant behavior, 

 because it is very difficult to adequately determine them otherwise. Con- 

 trasting climatic conditions are so intimately interwoven into the soil- 

 c'over of the state that they defy the geographer to depict them. For 

 example, on the floors of valleys conditions may develop widely along 

 contour lines, but on the edges of valleys they are almost super- 

 imposed for a little distance through the quick rise of hill or mountain 

 side. Above these, there may reappear contrasts like those of the valley 

 floor which they look down upon, and then rising again only a few 

 hundred feet perhaps one may come into an area where no broad- 

 leaved valley evergreen is safe. And such differences, though not 

 perhaps to the degree intimated, are discernible on individual prop- 

 erties which rise from valleys over adjacent hillsides to mountains 



