THE VOICE OF THE DESERT 



118 



Moreover, there are a few spectacular cases which it 

 would astonish most Europeans to hear about. Most of the 

 stately palm trees which grow along the Riviera ( and for 

 that matter in Hawaii) grow as natives only in California 

 and a few places in Arizona. Or consider the so-called 

 mimosa which seems so characteristic of southern France 

 in the region around Grasse where it makes a very im- 

 portant contribution to the perfume industry. What could 

 be more "typically French?" Actually it is a native of 

 Mexico, Texas and Arizona, not of Europe at all. Some- 

 time early in the seventeenth century it was imported into 

 the famous gardens of the Cardinal Odorardo Farnese, a 

 relative by marriage to the Borgias and the Medicis. It is 

 quite possible that all the French "mimosas" came from 

 that Italian garden and the botanical name of the plant, 

 Acacia famesiana, honors one of the more innocent activi- 

 ties of the Cardinal. 



Botanists try to distinguish among plants introduced by 

 human agency by calling those which grew only when man 

 tends them, "cultivated"; those which linger more or less 

 precariously after cultivation, "escaped"; and those which 

 now go it completely alone, "adventitious." But it is some- 

 times impossible to distinguish sharply between the last 

 two because there are some which are certainly almost, 

 though not quite, capable of going it alone. 



Perhaps the most familiar eastern example is the orange 

 day lily which not only lingers but spreads for generations 

 about the site of an abandoned house; perhaps the most 

 conspicuous desert example is the straggling shrub with 

 gaudy yellow and red blossoms, commonly called bird of 

 paradise, which came up from South America into Mexico 



