CARPET-WEED FAMILY. Aizoaceae. 



scarcely tinged with red and very glistening. The flowers 

 are about an inch across, with a greenish center, surrounded 

 by numerous, small, yellowish anthers and a single row of 

 many, white or flesh-colored petals, suggesting the tentacles 

 of a sea-anemone. In fact the whole plant is curiously 

 suggestive of some low form of animal life. It is very 

 troublesome to farmers in the south near the sea, and also 

 flourishes in the Mohave Desert, in France and the Canary 

 Islands. 



A very strange and conspicuous plant, 

 Sea Fig, Fig- 

 marigold often clothing sandy slopes with a curi- 



Mesembrydnthe- ous mantel of trailing, fleshy stems and 

 mum aequilaterale foliage thickly sprinkled with thousands 



of gaudy flowers. The stems are stout 

 California an( ^ flattish, several feet long; the leaves 



three-sided, with flat faces, tipped with a 

 small reddish point; the calyx-lobes three-sided like the 

 leaves. The stems, leaves, and the calyx-lobes are all pale 

 bluish-green with a "bloom" and exceedingly succulent, 

 the watery juice running out in large drops when the plant 

 is broken. The twigs seem to be fitted into a sort of 

 socket, from which they come out very easily, so that the 

 plant comes apart almost at a touch. The fragrant 

 flowers are two or three inches across, bright but crude 

 in color, the numerous, purplish-pink petals resembling 

 the rays of a composite and encircling a fuzzy ring of 

 innumerable stamens, with white, threadlike filaments 

 and small, straw-colored anthers, around a dark-green 

 center, composed of the top of the calyx and the six to ten 

 styles of the ovary. This accommodating plant is very I 

 useful and ornamental in hot, sandy places, where not 

 much else will grow, and may be seen hanging its long stems 

 over the sea-cliffs all along the coast, from Patagonia to 

 Marin County in California. It also grows in Africa and I 

 is extensively cultivated. The fruit is edible, with pulp | 

 and tiny seeds something like a fig. 



no 



