62 Our Araby 



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. Besides 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 while powder. 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 cafions. 



Notholaena parryi. Cloak fern. Fronds elongated, rather 

 narrow, pinnately divided, the upper surface densely 

 clothed with whitish hairs, the lower brown and woolly. 



Fouquieria splendens. Candle wood, Ocotillo. A unique 

 plant composed of a number of long gray thorny canes 

 diverging at ground: usually 6 or 8 feet high but 

 sometimes double 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 sufi^icient 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. 



