CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES 



silkworms, and its cousin, the bread-fruit tree of the Pacific 

 Islands, and there are some interesting and useful relatives 

 of the fig, one of which you may find out by yourselves be- 

 cause of its fruits; it is the India-rubber tree of our parks; you 

 can guess what part of the tree becomes the rubber. Another 

 member of the fig family is called the cow-tree, because its 

 juice is like milk and is good to drink. 



Some members of this group are not trees. There is 

 the yerba mansa, Fig. 64, which is also called alkali weed. 

 What seems to be a flower, is really a cluster of small, closely- 

 packed flowers, as you can see for yourselves. Many people 

 think the yerba mansa useful as a medicine; it has a relative 

 in India whose ground berries we call black pepper. One 

 family in this group is troublesome rather than useful; 

 that is the nettle family. You probably think our own 

 nettles bad enough, but in Australia, nettles become trees, 

 and their sting is very severe. 



Next to this group comes one we might call the weed 

 group, because it contains so many of our common weeds. 

 We shall study the weeds in another chapter, but some of 

 the weediest of families have members that have been culti- 

 vated to usefulness; the beet and rhubarb, for instance, are 

 nearly related to the dock and knot-weed. Other weedy 

 families also have members noted for beauty; chickweed 

 and purslane are troublesome weeds the world over, but the 

 chickweed belongs to the same family as the carnation pink 

 and our beautitul, wild Indian-pink, and purslane is a 

 member of the Portulaca family. The wild four-o'clock and 

 the sand verbena are classed in this group, but it is not 

 easy to explain why. There is one useful family in this 

 group, the buckwheat. The cultivated buckwheat not only 

 furnishes flour, but is also a valuable honey plant, and 

 some kinds of our wild buckwheat, or Eriogonums, are also 

 useful to bee-keepers. The Eriogonums can defy drought, 

 as you remember, and so it happens that in the summer 



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