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Garden and Forest. 



[February 26, 1890. 



Esparto Grass. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir. — Can you tell me whether the Spanish Esparto Grass 

 is growing anywhere in the southern States, and whether it can 

 be successfully introduced on the alluvial lands of our south- 

 ern rivers ? I make this inquiry as bearing on the question of 

 the production of a good vegetable fibre for the manufacture 

 of paper. 



Hill city, Tenn. F. G. Hampton. 



[We are informed by Dr. Vasey, of the Department of 

 Agriculture, that numerous attempts have been made to 

 grow the Esparto in this country, but without success up 

 to a recent date. Two years ago considerable seed was 

 sent out from the Department, but no reports of success 

 with it have been received. But at Berkeley, California, 

 in the grounds of the California Agricultural College, Dr. 

 Vasey saw last year a long row of this Grass growing very 

 luxuriantly, from which considerable seed had been dis- 

 tributed; so that it appears that the Esparto can be suc- 

 cessfully grown in California, and there seems to be no 

 reason why it should not succeed also in the Atlantic 

 states. — Ed. J 



Recent Publications. 



Plants of Baja California, by Townsend Smith Brandegee. 

 Reprinted from the Proceedings of the California Academy 

 of Science, ser. 2, vol. ii., pp. 117, 232 ; illustrated with twelve 

 plates. 



Mr. Brandegee's contribution to our knowledge of the 

 botany of Lower California is one of the most interesting 

 papers on American plants which has recently appeared. Up 

 to the present time very little has been known concerning the 

 botany of the southern part of the Lower California penin- 

 sula. Her Majesty's ship "Sulphur," during her voyage of 

 exploration, touched at Cape St. Lucas and at Magdalena Bay 

 in 1839, and the naturalist, Mr. Hinds, made a small collection 

 of plants at these places. Cape St. Lucas was next visited in 

 i860 by Mr. Zantus, who was the last botanist who visited this 

 region until 1887, when Mr. Walter E. Bryant, the ornitholo- 

 gist, made a small collection of plants from the neighborhood 

 of Magdalena Bay,, and Dr. Edward Palmer visited Los 

 Angeles Bay and Muleje. Mr. Brandegee, in the journey 

 which he made through the peninsula last winter, had the 

 opportunity not only to collect again the little known plants of 

 Hinds and Zantus, but to discover several new species, which 

 he describes in this paper. 



The peninsula of Lower California, a long, narrow strip of 

 land often not more than sixty miles wide, consists of a 

 mountain range varying in height from two to four thousand 

 feet, with its backbone near the gulf shore and a long grad- 

 ual slope to the Pacific Ocean. The climate is much warmer 

 on the gulf shore than it is on the Pacific side of the 

 peninsula. 



Mr. Brandegee landed in Magdalena Bay in about latitude 

 24, in January. In the mountains and on the sand-flats about 

 the town of Magdalena Bay 106 species of plants were found ; 

 many of these were seen nowhere else, except on the neigh- 

 boring island of Santa Margarita. No trees grow on these 

 islands with the exception of Veatchia, the Elephant-tree, cer- 

 tainly one of the most curious and remarkable of American 

 trees, first detected in this region by Mr. Hinds, but best 

 known by Dr. John A. Veatch's description of the trees, 

 which much later he detected on Cerros Island. Veatchia is 

 related to Rhus, from which it differs principally in its valvate 

 sepals, accrescent petals, and thin-walled fruit. The flowers, 

 which quite cover the leafless branches during the winter 

 months, are either bright pink or yellowish gray, Mr. Brande- 

 gee noticing the different colors on different trees. Veatchia 

 is dioecious, but the color of the flowers bears*, apparently, no 

 relation to sex. The Elephant-tree attains, sometimes, on the 

 mainland, a height of ten to twenty-five feet, with a trunk one 

 to two feet in diameter. It has low, tortuous, widely-spread- 

 ing branches, and fascicled leaves one to three inches long, 

 with sessile leaflets, and axillary or more or less large, ter- 

 minal panicles of minute flowers. It is known locally in 

 Lower California as "Copalquien," and the bark, as is the 

 case with many species of Rhus, is used in tanning leather. 

 The ripe fruit has not yet been collected. According to Dr. 

 Veatch, for whom Dr. Gray named the genus, separating it 

 from Rhus (the plant was first referred by Bentham to 

 Schinus, in his description of the plants collected by Mr. 



Hinds on the "Sulphur " voyage), "it derives its name from 

 the elephantine proportions of its sturdy, heavy-looking trunk 

 and branches. The main trunk of a full grown tree will 

 probably average two feet in diameter, the height being a little 

 more and often less than the diameter. The trunk divides 

 into several ponderous branches that shoot off horizontally, 

 and are bent and contracted in grotesque resemblance of the 

 reflexed limbs of a corpulent human being. These huge 

 branches often terminate suddenly in a few short twigs 

 covered with a profusion of red flowers, reminding one of 

 the proboscis of an elephant holding a nosegay. The resem- 

 blance is heightened by the peculiar brown, skin-like epider- 

 mis that forms the outer bark, which splits and peels off 

 annually, accommodating the increase of growth. The 

 branches of the larger trees often shoot out to a horizontal 

 distance of twenty feet from the trunk, thus covering an area 

 of forty feet in diameter. Smaller subordinate limbs spring- 

 upward from the upper side of the large boughs, and in this 

 way give a neat oval appearance to the outline of the tree. 

 When loaded with its bright red flowers the effect is strikingly 

 beautiful, particularly where hundreds of the trees stand near 

 each other, intertwining their huge boughs and forbidding 

 ingress to the mysterious space they cover and protect. The 

 young tree looks a good deal like a huge radish protruding 

 from the ground with but a slight root and a few twig-like 

 branches expanding from the top." 



Mr. Brandegee, from Magdalena, went up the lagoon to San 

 Gregoria, where a number of new plants were found. One 

 of the most interesting, perhaps, is the new Ipomcea, first 

 detected on Magdalena Island, and for which the name of I. 

 Jicama is proposed. It is a woody species climbing about 

 over shrubs and producing large white flowers. The chief 

 interest of this plant, however, is found in its roots, which 

 " bear tubers that are much sought for on account of their 

 fine flavor and watery juice. One weighing six pounds is said 

 to have been found, and traditions of a ten-pounder are extant ; 

 but the largest seen weighed two or three pounds and they 

 are usually much smaller. These tubers must grow very fast 

 during the rainy and spring season, for their location, often 

 three feet or more from the base of the stems, is discovered 

 by the growth cracking the soil. New stems never spring 

 from them and their use to the parent plant is uncertain; per- 

 haps it is to store up moisture to be drawn during the dry sea- 

 son. These round tubers or " Jicamas " are always eaten raw 

 and resemble in taste a turnip somewhat sweetened. Wher- 

 ever the plant grows, near plantations or along trails, numer- 

 ous little hollows may be seen around the plants at distances 

 varying from two to four feet, showing the places from which 

 the tubers have been dug." 



From San Gregoria our traveler proceeded to Comondu, 

 where two weeks were given to a careful exploration of the 

 flora, and then, with a pack train and guides, was begun the 

 ' principal journey, which carried the party through the centre 

 of the peninsula for a distance of nearly five hundred miles, 

 over a dry, desolate, rocky and almost uninhabited region, 

 finally landing them, at the end of a weary march of two 

 months, at San Ouintin, two degrees south of San Diego. A 

 fine new Agave, for which Mr. Brandegee proposes the name 

 of A. sobria, was the most conspicuous plant on the high 

 mesas about Comondu. It is described as ten feet high, with 

 thick radical leaves and a panicle of five hundred dark yellow 

 flowers. After leaving Comondu no great change was ob- 

 served in the flora for several days. Rhus laurina, a common 

 tree or shrub covering large areas in southern California and in 

 the northern part of the peninsula, was first seen near San Jose 

 de Gracia, nodoubtatthe southern limit of its distribution ; and 

 near here were several large forests of Cerens Pringlei (see 

 Garden and Forest, ii., 6). For a new arborescent Yucca 

 Mr. Brandegee proposes the name of Yiicca valeda. It attains 

 the height of fifteen or twenty feet, with trunks eight inches to 

 two feet or more in diameter, growing in clumps and branch- 

 ing from the base. The leaves are thin, smooth, flexible, six 

 to nine inches long and only a half to three-quarters of an 

 inch wide, the margins dividing into slender white threads. 

 The panicie of flowers is very short, only about a foot long 

 and somewhat pubescent. The flowers are creamy white, 

 two to two and a half inches broad, on peduncles nearly as long 

 as the segments of the perianth, which are broadly lanceolate. 

 A photograph (plate xi.) represents a wide-spreading speci- 

 men of this interesting plant, which, near Patrocinia, forms 

 forests miles in extent ; the trees, Mr. Brandegee remarks, 

 being in general appearance strikingly like those of Y. brevi- 

 folia of the Mohave Desert, though the trunks are less cov- 

 ered with the old reflexed leaves. The old Catholic Mission 

 at San Ignacio, embalmed in a forest of Date Palms, seemed 



