USEFUL WILD PLANTS 



to this, and by some botanists considered only a 

 variety of it, is the Scurvy Grass {Barbarea praecox, 

 E. Br.), with leaf divisions more numerous than 

 those of the Winter Cress. It, also, is used as a 

 winter salad. It must have been very grateful to 

 systems suffering from the unvaried ration of salt 

 meat that too often distinguished the winter tables 

 of our rural ancestors. 



In the same class are two large cruciferous plants 

 of the arid regions of the Far West, that go by the 

 name of Wild Cabbage among the whites who know 

 them. Their tender stems and leaves have a cab- 

 bage-liJse taste and have at times gone into the 

 pioneer 's cooking pots. One is Stanley a pinnatifida, 

 Nutt., found in dry, even desert soil, from South 

 Dakota to New Mexico and westward to California, 

 a stout, smooth perennial, two to four feet tall, with 

 lower leaves divided into slender segments and with 

 long racemes of yellow, four-petaled flowers, suc- 

 ceeded by slender seed-vessels downwardly curved 

 on long foot-stalks. The other is Caulanthus crassi- 

 caulis (Torr.), Wats., found on dry foothills of the 

 interior basin from the Sierra Nevada to Utah. It, 

 too, is a stout, smooth perennial, two to three feet 

 high, but with hollow, inflated stems, leaves mostly 

 radical and in shape somewhat like a dandelion's, 



126 



