THE VOICE OF THE DESERT "j "j ^ 



established there? The answer to that question is simply 

 that he didn't. As a matter of fact, Tribulus probably 

 wasn't even there then. Today it seems at least as much at 

 home as we do but, hke us, it is really a native of the Old 

 World and it came as an unnoticed colonist. Nobody is 

 sure just when it arrived, but it was first noticed near the 

 Pacific Coast in comparatively recent times and the pil- 

 grim fathers of its tribe probably landed there. By now it 

 is common as far east as Nebraska or Kansas and is found 

 sometimes in the Atlantic states. 



Thus, of plants as of people it is perfectly proper to ask, 

 "Where did your forefathers come from?" The recent plant 

 invaders have not, to be sure, ousted the natives as effec- 

 tively as the white man has ousted the Indian, but if one 

 goes back far enough it is often difficult to know who really 

 is an aborigine. The Indians came from somewhere else 

 and so, probably, did the cactus even if it got here a long 

 time before they did. 



Over the whole of the United States many of the most 

 taken-f or-granted plants were not here a few centuries ago, 

 though they are now so thoroughly at home that sometimes 

 only recorded history can distinguish the newcomers from 

 those who have been here for thousands of years. The 

 daisy and the Queen Anne's lace, so familiar in New Eng- 

 land, are Europeans; so are the dandelion and the mullens 

 of the East, the West, and everywhere else. Probably the 

 Pilgrims had dandelions almost as soon as they had 

 meadows, but there were none here before European man 

 arrived. 



Within our continent itself hardy pioneers, plant or 

 even animal, go both west and east. Within the last quarter 



