6o CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



presence of this plant, growing for league on league 

 almost identical in size and spacing, now stirred to 

 a momentary sigh by the fitful wind, then, in a mo- 

 ment, motionless as death in the trance-like stillness 

 of the heat. 



A noticeable plant about water-holes and oases 

 is the arrowweed, Pluchea sericea. It wears the des- 

 ert's regular livery of gray, and forms dense thick- 

 ets, six or eight feet high, through which it is not 

 easy to push one's way. The cane-like stems grow 

 straight and stiiif from the ground, needing only 

 smoothing, by rubbing on a grooved rock, to make 

 excellent shafts for the light Indian arrows. The 

 feathery leaves have an acrid smell, always associ- 

 ated in my mind with the thought of jaded arrivals 

 at long-expected camping-places, and eager draughts 

 of tepid, unsatisfying water. The blossom is a fuzzy, 

 dingy, pink affair, appropriate to the unwholesome 

 alkaline soils which the plant seems to prefer. 



The general grayness of desert vegetation is largely 

 due to one class of plants, the genus A triplex, which 

 with its many species makes up a large proportion 

 of the total growth. Wide areas of low-lying desert 

 are dotted with great hummocks of quail bush, 

 A. lentiformis, curious in their perfect, dome-like 

 form and easily mistaken at a little distance for 

 drifts of sand. This shape, typical of the desert 

 growths, no doubt represents an effort at self- 

 protection from the general persecutor the sun. 

 The canny tortoise seems to have set the model with 

 his make-what-you-can-of-that contour; and there 

 really is not much to be made of it, either by wind, 



