CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES 



CHAPTER X. 



PLANTS WITH MECHANICAL GENIUS. 



In olden times if a man's father were a baker, he him- 

 self would be a baker, and so would his son and his son's 

 son. Every man followed the trade practiced for genera- 

 tions by other members of his family, and so all became 

 skilled workmen. This is true in some countries to-day. 

 It is also true that there are some families of musicians or 

 even of literary men. 



In the plant world, we have one family at least, the pea 

 family, with a talent in one direction; nearly every member 

 of this family has some ingenious mechanical device. It is a 

 large family and furnishes us many beautiful and useful 

 plants. It includes the lupines, which make beautiful so 

 many spots in California, from the sea beaches to the very 

 mountain tops. The lupines adapt themselves to all condi- 

 tions. There are annuals that grow rapidly, and flower 

 and fruit during the few months of the rainy season ; and 

 there are perennials that, even in Southern California, can 

 keep on blooming all the year. On sea beaches, the lupines 

 send out roots sometimes thirty feet long, and clothe them- 

 selves in woolly or thick, silken coats; along streams, the 

 smooth, bright green leaves of one lupine are six or eight 

 inches across, and the flower clusters reach up higher than 

 a man's head ; while up in the mountains there are little 

 perennial lupines but a few inches high, with leaves soft 

 and silky as seal skin, and sturdy little stems and roots that 



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