Some Additions to Our State Flora. 755 



thoughts that you are here for study in the consciousness that 

 you are among friends. ^■.-'■. 



How you wish to become acquainted with them all; to learn their 

 habits and enter into their instincts and feelings! But, as among- 

 our own kind, we cannot possibly become acquainted with one in 

 a thousand of all the good people on the earth, so, here in the sea, 

 we must necessarily choose our special friends, and wait for future 

 opportunities to become better acquainted with the others. 



For good reasons, to my mind, I have chosen the A'jolttisks as 

 special objects of study, and now wish to introduce them to any 

 one who is seeking to make pleasant acquaintances. I will vouch 

 for it that there is not one of them that carries a bag of poison, or 

 that will harm you in the least; and if you only approach them in a 

 Iriendly spirit, they will stand ready to give you the best of their 

 possessions, and make your life sweeter and happier for having 

 known them. Josiah Keep. 



SOME ADDITIONS TO OUR STATE FLORA. 

 Malva parviflora, Linn. 



This plant is so very common, and grows so very luxuriantly 

 in many parts of California, that one cannot treat of it as an 

 addition to the State flora save in name only. It already has a 

 place in our books, but under the wrong name of Malva borealis. 

 It was known to the early collectors on the coast and no doubt 

 became established here before the advent of our English speaking 

 people. Douglas collected it, and, on the strength of his speci- 

 mens, it obtained at the hands of Torrey and Gray a new name, 

 as a supposed new species. It is clearly the Malva obtusa, n. sp. , 

 of their flora. Those authors say nothing about the size of the 

 plant, but they describe the stem as being prostrate. So it is 

 when found along our sidewalks, late in the season, but in these 

 instances it has been stunted and depressed by busy feet or trail- 

 ing garments of passers by. It is a very different thing as seen 

 growing in sheltered fence corners and elsewhere, well nourished 

 and unmolested. Under these conditions it usually grows per- 

 fectly erect and to the height of five or six feet. This is its ordi- 

 nary stature about Berkeley; but last August at the mouth of a 

 canon near the sea shore, some forty miles above Santa Barbara, 

 I walked amid a thicket of it fully ten feet high. In all its forms, 

 great and small, it is easily recognized by that character from 

 which it takes its name, the very small corollas, which are white 

 and scarcely exceed the calyx. The calyx also is very character- 

 istic, at least in fruit, being then considerably enlarged and but 

 very slightly lobed, the border spreading away like a flat rim 

 around the flattened circle of very minutely and sharply rugose 

 carpels My own library of Old World botany, supplemented by 

 a very fine suite of specimens of Old World Malvae in the herb- 



