48 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



of a well-shaped apple tree. The foliage is abundant, 

 yielding welcome shade, and the wood is exceedingly 

 hard and makes excellent fuel. Its dull-blue flowers 

 are not specially attractive, and it bears beans that, 

 so far as I know, are not eaten by man or beast, 

 though I have seen my horse nibble the young 

 leaves with a resigned air when sugary mesquit, 

 humdrum galleta grass, and even that furniture- 

 polish sort of stuff, burro-weed, have all left us in 

 the lurch. 



The ironwood has not a wide range, and one 

 might travel the desert for a long time without meet- 

 ing it. In the northeastern part of the Colorado 

 Desert, not far from the river, there is a little-visited 

 range of hills called the Ironwood Mountains, or 

 sometimes the McCoys. On their southern outskirts 

 I rode for hours through what, for the desert, might 

 be called a forest of these trees, some of which had 

 trunks more than two feet in diameter. 



There is a widely distributed, straggling bush that 

 at a cursory glance looks rather like an unthrifty 

 mesquit. It is the cat-claw, Acacia greggii, an affec- 

 tionate creature that grapples you to its soul with 

 hooks of steel and loves to keep you t*here, taking a 

 double hold for every claw you gently disengage. 

 The leaf is mesquit-like, but smaller and finer, the 

 blossom also similar, a fuzzy catkin, and the fruit 

 a curious curly bean that dries into gouty-looking 

 contortions. You will not go far on the desert with- 

 out meeting the cat-claw, nor will you part without 

 cursing it. 



A feature of all desert trees, except the palm, is 



