46 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



like, upon the plain from some red, mysterious 

 canon brings nightmare thoughts of the grim genii, 

 Thirst and Famine, that might here have their 

 abode. 



In early summer one may see this torrent turn 

 suddenly from gray to liveliest color. The smoke- 

 tree, like the palo verde, makes up for absence of 

 foliage by a huge burst of blossom. In this case it is 

 blue, the purest ultramarine, each tree a cloud of 

 small, pea-like flowers that as they shrivel and fall 

 collect in windrows like drifts of azure snow. (An- 

 other name for the tree is indigo bush, though the 

 true hue of the blossom is not indigo : yet another is 

 desert cedar, which is totally without point.) Some 

 day a painter will chance upon this sight, and at 

 danger of death by thirst will refuse to move from 

 the spot until he has fixed upon canvas the desert 

 at its highest color power. He had better, though, be 

 a painter unusually reckless of his reputation, for all 

 the world will swear he lies. 



The smoke-tree gives me occasion to voice an old 

 grudge that I have long held against the botanical 

 tribe. Harmless, even kindly, as botanists in general 

 appear, how is it that they take delight in embitter- 

 ing the lives of laymen by their eternal juggling 

 with the names of genera and species? If they really 

 wish to discourage us poor "popular" chaps, all 

 right ; let them say so and we can turn to something 

 lighter, say eugenics, or those frivolous things, conic 

 sections. For many a year the smoke-tree and its 

 relatives were known to all the world as of the 

 genus Dalea. To-day the puzzled amateur finds that 



