CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES 



as in Fig. 21, but when many plants grow close together, 

 the leaves rise and stretch up to the sun. Count the leaves 

 on such a plant and see how many are not shaded. Even 

 if one leaf must stand between another and the sun, it is so 

 slashed and divided that it lets much light through. The 

 lupine seedling in the picture spreads out like a fan with 

 leaves facing the sun; it looks almost as if it had been 

 pressed for a herbarium. This lupine has a coat of silky 

 hairs that later on will preserve it from loss of moisture, 

 but now it protects it from the cold of the nights. The 

 bur-clover leaves know a good way to keep warm at night; 

 they fold their leaflets and cuddle them close together so 

 that they lose less heat. You can see this easily for your- 

 selves, for the clover leaves go to sleep early. Try to find 

 other leaves that take "sleeping positions." 



But our green carpet does not consist entirely of seed- 

 lings. Soon after the first heavy rains, plants like those in 

 Fig. 22 appear and soon overtop the others. By digging, you 

 can find out why they grow so much faster than the seed- 

 lings. No. 4, Fig. 22, is the soap-root, cut in two to show 

 what the bulb is like inside. The soap-root is very com- 

 mon in California, and it is well named, for it does very 

 nicely for soap. Examine a plant carefully and you will 

 find that the white layers are the bases of the leaves, and 

 that the layers of brown husk are the remains of leaves of 

 other years. The white substance is, of course, mainly 

 food, and the soapy quality protects it against hungry little 

 gophers and the like; the husk of strong interlacing strands 

 is a protection too. Compare the amount of food in this 

 bulb with what is stored in little seeds like the bur-clover 

 or malva, and you will understand why the soap-root can 

 grow so fast. As long as there is plenty of moisture, its 

 pretty ruffled leaves go on making more food and storing it 

 in their bases; but do you think these leaves can go on 

 working when the dry season comes? They are like the 



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