TAMARISK FAMILY 



(Tamariscinece) 



Shrubby plants with small, undivided, alternate leaves 

 somewhat fleshy, and rather closely related to the Pink Family. 



OCOTILLO. CAXDLEWOOD (Fouquierp, splendens Engelm.). 

 Flowers tubular, bright crimson, crowded in terminal spikes 

 6 or 8 inches long; a shrub with fragile wood, the stems with- 

 out branches, ashen gray, thorny; and with small, sessile, 

 axillary leaves, borne near the summit of the stems. 



This striking plant, with masses of whip-like stems rising 

 like a fire-tipped, thorn-encrusted, lignified fountain to the 

 height of sometimes 15 or 20 feet from the desert sands, is 

 found abundantly throughout the arid regions of South- 

 eastern California, eastward to Texas and south to Mexico, 

 blooming in late winter and in the spring. It is of consider- 

 able economic importance on the desert, the stems being used 

 for fences and even house walls. The stem is fragrantly resin- 

 ous and waxy and splints of it may be lighted and will burn like 

 candles. Ocotillb (pronounced ocotee'yo), is a diminutive of ocote, 

 a Mexican pine whose wood is used for torches. Fouquiera 

 commemorates a French doctor of medicine, P. E. Fouquier. 

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