EXOGENS OR DICOTYLEDONS 



flowers may be showy or fragrant, appealing to insects, like 

 the geranium, orange and wild lilac, or they may be small 

 and green, depending on the wind, like the grape and poison 

 oak. Some of the families consist only of herbs, others 

 contain shrubs, vines and trees. You remember some of 

 the plants that are related to the geranium; flax is also 

 nearly related; perhaps you have seen its pretty, blue flowers, 

 and know what use is made of the strong woody fibers of 

 the stems. You can think of two or three relatives of the 

 orange. The poison oak belongs to the Rhus family, which 

 includes many other California shrubs, most of them with 

 evergreen leaves; some kinds are known as sumach, and 

 their leaves are often very brilliantly colored when about to 

 perish. The cultivated Virginia creeper, a near relative of 

 the grape, has also gorgeous autumn coloring. The shrubs 

 called buckthorn are nearly related to the California lilacs, 

 and so belong to this group; also the pepper tree of our 

 streets and the maple, buckeye and horse-chestnut. 



The next group contains one of the largest and strong- 

 est of plant tamilies, the Euphorbia family, but most of its 

 members are tropical. We have introduced some of the 

 more hardy of these foreigners, the Poinsettia, for instance, 

 the shrub that makes such a gorgeous display of scarlet 

 about Christmas time. Possibly you have noticed that the 

 Poinsettia has very milky juice, and that the scarlet part is 

 really a whorl of leaves surrounding a cluster of small, 

 simple flowers. There are a few California Euphorbias. 

 One of them, called rattlesnake weed, is common in the 

 south; it grows in round mats close to the hard sun-baked 

 earth and, like the Poinsettia, it has milky juice and flower 

 clusters surrounded by bracts, but the bracts, which are 

 brown, with white margins, are very small, in fact the whole 

 flower cluster is not much larger than a pin head. The 

 turkey-weed, too, belongs to the Euphorbia family, and so 

 does the castor-oil plant, but you would hardly see why. A 



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