ESCHSCHOLTZIA. 51 



ESCHSCHOLTZIA. 



BY VOLNEY RATTAN. 



It is fitting that we should devote a few minutes this afternoon 

 to the character and history of the plant which has been chosen as the 

 emblem of our state. The members of a floral society are, I am sure, 

 ready to give not minutes, merely, but hours to the study of each of 

 the many floral native daughters of the "Golden West," who beautify 

 not only the wilds, which we seek in our vacations, but with the dust 

 of civilization in their eyes, smile upon us from the waysides of our 

 populous suburbs. Flower lovers are ready to give more than a pass- 

 ing glance to the baerias, which carpet the smooth slopes of the Mission 

 hills; the collinsias and arabis among the rocks; the slender hosackias 

 fringing the street-cuts, and trailing over natural banks; white ortho- 

 carpus like popcorn sown over moist flats; rosy gilias along the rail- 

 way, and yellow cenotheras everywhere. That flowers be more to us 

 tfian to him of whom the poet wrote, 



"The primrose by the river's brim 

 A yellow primrose was to him, 

 And it was nothing more," 



we must study them; we must know them well. 



In our study of eschscholtzia, we shall first take up the history of 

 the knowledge of it by civilized man. 



The first European who came anywhere near the region of esch- 

 scholtzia was Cortez, who visited the peninsula of California in 1534. 

 It is scarcely possible that he saw our plant. Cabrillo, the Portu- 

 guese, may have seen it when he landed at San Diego in 1542; but it 

 is not likely that he knew it from a buttercup. Thirty-seven years 

 later Sir Francis Drake may have crushed eschscholtzias when he 

 landed on this coast. It must have been two hundred years after 

 Drake's visit that civilized people the founders of our first mis- 

 sions began to notice our state flower, and to talk about it under 

 some Indian name, or one of their own making. Possibly, some of 

 these missionaries were versed in the lore of plants, and recognized its 

 relationship to the common poppy of the Old World. 



The first botanist who entered the region of eschscholtzia was 

 Archibald Menzies, who visited the coast of Washington in 1780. 

 Since our plant is rare so far north, it is not likely that he saw it. 

 Probably the first botanist to see eschscholtzias was either Ifenke or 

 Nee, who were with the Spanish explorer Malaspina, when he visited 

 San Diego and Monterey, in 1791. In November, the next year, 



