]2J.3 °"^ every single one of them is right 



taken: you coat it with some substance which will require 

 a known number of hours to dissolve. Many desert seeds 

 learnefl this trick many thousands of years ago. They are 

 covered with a layer of wax which prevents the absorption 

 of water until it has worn away and it wears away after an 

 appropriate time. The beautiful shrub, Acacia constricta, 

 which bears pompons of yellow flowers in spring is one 

 such. The seeds are rather small, black and obviously 

 waxy. Under natural conditions they will not germinate 

 in less than a year's time. But if you cut through the outer 

 coat, they will begin to grow immediately in damp earth. 



I happen, however, to have a more intimate personal 

 acquaintance with an even stranger plant, the coral bean. 

 In this climate it is a smallish bush whose stems look dry 

 and lifeless during most of the year. Like the queen of 

 the night and the ocotillo it makes a specialty of blooming 

 at the moment when it appears quite incapable of any- 

 thing of the sort, and in early spring, after the winter rain, 

 its bare stem breaks forth with bright compact masses of 

 brilliant red flowers each some two inches long. Usually 

 it waits until after the summer rains, six weeks or two 

 months after it has bloomed, before it bothers to put forth 

 the leaves which it drops again very early in the fall. 

 Meanwhile, pods, much like those of the string bean and 

 often well over a foot long, have been forming. By autumn 

 they have split half -open to reveal a row of large beans, 

 bright red in color, obviously waxy, and as hard as stones. 

 In Mexico they are made into necklaces and they last in- 

 definitely. 



Innocently to plant one is to risk losing one's faith in 

 the seed as a symbol of resurrection, or at least to suspect 

 that these particular seeds are waiting for the last trump. 



