In the Sierra 



the medium-sized acorns are shallow, thick 

 walled, and covered with a golden dust of 

 minute hairs. Some of the trees have hardly 

 any main trunk, dividing near the ground 

 into large wide-spreading limbs, and these, 

 dividing again and again, terminate in long, 

 drooping, cord-like branchlets, many of 

 which reach nearly to the ground, while a 

 dense canopy of short, shining leafy branch- 

 lets forms a round head which looks some- 

 thing like a cumulus cloud when the sun- 

 shine is pouring over it. 



A marked plant is the bush poppy (Den- 

 drome con rigidum}, found on the hot hillsides 

 near camp, the only woody member of the 

 order I have yet met in all my walks. Its 

 flowers are bright orange yellow, an inch to 

 two inches wide, fruit-pods three or four 

 inches long, slender and curving, height 

 of bushes about four feet, made up of many 

 slim, straight branches, radiating from the 

 root, a companion of the manzanita and 

 other sun-loving chaparral shrubs. 



