WEW Y«*RK 



SOTANICAL 



aARDHN 



BULLETIN OF THE 



Southern California Academy of Sciences 



The Immigrant Plants of Southern Cahfornia 



S. B. PARISH 



The distinction between the indigenous and the immigrant constitupnts of our 

 present flora is merely in the time and manner of their accession thereto. All are 

 of foreign ancestry, even the endemics, which are either lingering relics, or mod'- 

 tied mutants, of former invaders. Once and again cosmic oscillations of climate 

 have driven out the old inhabitants, and in time opened the way for new races. 

 In historic times additions have been made by the agency of migratory birds, or 

 by the currents of the ocean or of great rivers. 



All these elements we are content to call indigenous, and, by a narrower defini- 

 tion, to restrict the term immigrant to those whose presence is due, directly or 

 indirectly, to human agency. So far as California is concerned, this agency may 

 be confined to civilized man, for the Indians of the Pacific coast were without 

 agriculture or commerce, and depended for their subsistence on the natural products 

 of land and water. In their limited wanderings they may have disseminated to 

 some extent the seeds of the native food plants; but only in such slight degree did 

 they disturb the operation of natural processes. 



It will be safe, then, to assume a very definite date for the beginning of that 

 foreign invasion which since has so greatly modified the plant population of the 

 State. For it must have been a virgin flora that greeted the eyes of Fr. Serra 

 and his companions, when, on the 14th day of May, 1769, they reached the bay ot 

 San Diego, to begin the conquest of California Alta for Holy Church and the 

 Spanish Crown. The few previous explorers had arrived by sea, and had made but 

 transient landings, but the followers of Saint Francis brought with them flocks 

 and herds, and in the careful preparations for their expedition they had been 

 particularly charged to provide themselves with store of seeds of useful plants. 

 Step by step the long chain of missions was stretched northward along the coast, 

 until, in 1823, the last was founded, in honor of San Francisco de Solano, near 

 the site of the present town of Sonoma. Everywhere one of the first proceedings 

 was the planting of gardens, and the sowing of fields; and the neophytes, as they 

 were gathered in, were taught to be farmers and herdsmen, so that each mission 

 speedily became a hive of industry, based on its wide acres and countless herds. 

 Eventually a considerable secular immigration came from Mexico by way of Lower 

 California and of Sonora, the last passing through the present Arizona' and the 

 Colorado Desert; and a scanty commerce, licit and illicit, visited the ports. 

 THE MISSION PERIOD 



It was during this pastoral period that, in the pellage of domestic animals, 

 and in the seed for sowing, those Mediterranean plants, the wild oats, the bur 

 clover, the filaree, the wild mustard, and others, were introduced, which today 

 form so distinctive a feature in our flora. Their advance over the coast was from 

 south to north, as each new inission drew its stock of seeds and animals from the 

 granaries and herds of the older ones. Most of these introductions were dis- 

 tinctly beneficial, greatly augmenting the forage resources of the country; few of 

 them have proved seriously harmful. 



These conclusions are only matters of reasonable inference, for in their writ- 

 ings the good fathers make but vague and scanty reference to the vegetation about 

 them. They were without the least tincture of botanical knowledge, and noted the 

 aspect of forest or meadow solely from the economic point of view. Their most 

 frequent observations relate to the possibilities for grazing, and were usually con- 

 fined to noting that they found a place "con pasto" or "sin pasto," as grass was 

 plentiful or wanting. Fr. Crespi,' the diarist of Portola's expedition, and of them 

 all the most appreciative of natural beauty, had some eye for the bright flowers 

 that enlivened the landscape; but most of all was his heart drawn to the "rosa de 

 Castilla" by the brookside, or to some aromatic herb" which recalled the "romero" 

 of his native hills in far-distant Spain. 



The later years of this period were signalized by the visits of some famous 

 early botanists. In 1831, David Douglas, in the course of his extensive travels on 

 the Pacific coast, made collections at Santa Barbara; in the next -year Thomas 

 Coulter journeyed from Monterey to the Colorado river; in 183S Thomas Nuttall 

 spent some time at Santa Barbara and San Diego. Their labors added greatly to 

 the knowledge of the indigenous flora; but they either found few alien plants, or 

 they disregarded them. Just before the mission period drew to its close, John C. 

 Fremont, in 1845, in the course of his adventurous second expedition, rode from 

 north to south through the great valleys, and across the mountains and deserts 

 of the future state. His journal records many interesting observations concerning 

 the vegetation along his route, but he notices but one introduced plant. 



'Crespi. Juan Viage de la espedicion de tierra de San Diego a Monterey. 1769. 

 ^Probably Trichostema lanceolatum Benth., which is still so called by Spanish- 

 speaking Californians. 



