USEFUL WILD PLANTS 



factorily. ~ An odd and all but forgotten use of these 

 vegetable water barrels of the desert is their former 

 employment by Indians as cooking vessels. The 

 fleshy interior was scooped out and the shell treated 

 as a pot, into which water (secured by the mashing 

 up of the pulp) was poured, heated with hot stones 

 and these withdrawn as they cooled and replaced 

 with hotter. Meantime the meat and other edibles 

 were dropped in and allowed to simmer until done. 

 Upon breaking camp, the cook abandoned her im- 

 promptu kettle, depending upon finding material for 

 a new one at the next stopping place. 



Throughout the arid and semi-desert regions of the 

 Southwest from New Mexico to Southern California, 

 a peculiar plant called Ephedra by the botanists is 

 abundant. There are several recognized species but 

 all have so strong a family resemblance that in 

 popular parlance they are lumped as one and spoken 

 of as Desert Tea or Teamster's Tea. They are 

 shrubby plants, two or three feet high, greenish- 

 yellow and distinguished by slim, cylindrical, many- 

 jointed stems and abundant opposite branches, the 

 leaves reduced to mere scales. The clustered flow- 

 ers, inconspicuous and borne in the axils of the 

 branches, are of two sorts on different plants, the 

 pistillate producing solitary, black seeds of intense 



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