CHAPTER XVI 



which are commonly classed with weeds. The "Jimson " weed is 

 properly Datura stramonium, a common weed in the Atlantic States, 

 which took its name from the Jamestown of colonial days. This weed 

 is occasionally seen in California, but its common name is applied to 

 our native Datura meteloides, DC., which has the same poisonous and 

 narcotic qualities. The native Datura is a handsome plant, despite 

 its rather ill repute and disagreeable foliage ; its huge white or violet- 

 tinted flowers are produced in profusion from May to November. 

 The fennel, with its exceedingly delicate foliage, grows so luxuriantly 

 during the summer and autumn about the towns of Southern Califor- 

 nia that stories of fennel thickets being resorts for wild beasts in Asia 

 Minor seem quite credible. The castor-oil plant, Ricinus communis, 

 Linn., generally cultivated in gardens and greenhouses, grows spon- 

 taneously in the south, frequently attaining the height of trees ; and 

 the tree-tobacco, Nicotiana glauca, Graham, becomes a graceful tree 

 in two or three years. These two plants speedily transform unsightly 

 vacant city lots of southern towns into miniature parks. Some pecu- 

 liarities of the leaves of the Ricinus were noted in Chapter III. The 

 flowers are unisexual, the pistillate flowers terminating the clusters> 

 which bear staminate flowers lower down. The stamens are clustered 

 like bunches of grapes, and produce a great quantity of fine, dry 

 pollen ; the stigmas, too, are characteristic of wind-pollinated flowers, 

 being very large and rough. Bees visit the plants for the viscid sub- 

 stance contained in the glands previously mentioned, but they are not 

 likely to play any part in pollination. The seeds and their distribu- 

 tion were considered in Chapter II. The tree-tobacco is a recent 

 immigrant from South America. Like other species of tobacco, it 

 produces almost incredibly numerous seeds ; they are held in open 

 capsules, and are carried far and wide on the winds, so that young 

 seedlings are seen springing up everywhere, even on perpendicular 

 walls of clay and on the ruins of old adobe structures. The trees are 

 in flower all the year round, and in even the coldest weather, hum- 

 ming birds can count on their hospitality, for the flowers, although 

 yellow in color, are in form and structure well adapted to the birds ; 

 they are pendent, long and tubular, and are rendered still more exclu- 

 sive by incurving stamens; they secrete honey abundantly, and attract 

 throngs of birds. If these were native flowers, we should consider 

 the bearing of their color and their guests upon the theories of flower 

 coloration, since all our natives of similar structure are scarlet ; but 

 we should need first to know of the insect and bird life in the native 

 home of the tree tobacco ; so, like the birds, we are content to accept 

 them and enjoy them without question. 



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