APPENDIX 371 



or so high, with small yellow flowers and very narrow straight 

 seed-vessels. Blooms in late spring. 

 Euphorbia polycarpa. Rattlesnake weed: Span., Golondrina. A 

 flat-growing, mat-like plant with radiating reddish stems and 

 small, roundish, bronze-green, white-edged leaves. Flowers 

 very small, white or pinkish. Blooms in late spring. 



Fagonia californica. A low, open-growing plant found on rocky 

 desert hillsides, with hardly noticeable leaves but many pretty, 

 star-shaped, pale magenta flowers. Blooms in mid-spring. 

 Ferns : These are naturally rare in desert regions, and are found 

 only along the bases of the mountains, where falls the greater 

 part of the little rain that occurs in this arid territory. Be- 

 sides those named there are a few others which are very 

 rarely found. 

 Cheilanthes viscida. Lip fern. Fronds elongated, dark green, 

 very much dissected, and covered with a sticky secretion. 

 Found usually in crevices of the rocks in canons. 

 Notholaena cretacea. Cloak fern. Fronds triangular in outline, 

 moderately divided, and thickly coated with a white pow- 

 der. When dry they roll up into brittle balls, but when rain 

 comes they unroll and resume life. This and the species next 

 named usually grow under the edges of rocks and boulders on 

 hillsides, or on the sides of caiions. 

 Notholaena parryi. Cloak fern. Fronds elongated, rather nar- 

 row, pinnately divided, the upper surface densely clothed 

 with whitish hairs, the lower brown and woolly. 

 Fouquieria splendens. Candle-wood: Span., Ocotillo. A unique 

 plant composed of a number of long gray thorny canes diverg- 

 ing at the ground : usually 6 or 8 feet high but sometimes dou- 

 ble as much or over. Leaves small, dark green, and short-lived: 

 flowers scarlet, tubular, in a long spike at ends of canes. Blooms 

 in early spring, or at any time when sufficient rain has fallen. 

 Franseria dumosa. Burro-weed. A stiff, brittle, rounded, gray 

 bush, common on and near the base of desert mountains. 

 Leaves small, gray-green: flowers yellowish, in close spikes. 

 The plant has a strong, somewhat turpentiny smell. Blooms in 

 mid-spring. 



Grasses — 



Cynodon dactylon. Bermuda grass. Not properly a desert 

 grass, but has become established in the irrigated areas, 



