
CARPET-WEED FAMILY. Aizoaceae. 
scarcely tinged with red and very glistening. The flowers 
are about an inch across, with a greenish center, surrounded 
by numerous, small, yellowish anthers and a single row of 
many, white or flesh-colored petals, suggesting the tentacles 
of a sea-anemone. In fact the whole plant is curiously 
suggestive of some low form of animal life. It is very 
troublesome to farmers in the south near the sea, and also 
flourishes in the Mohave Desert, in France and the Canary 
Islands. 
Sea Fig, Fig- A very strange and conspicuous plant, 
aaciedia often clothing sandy slopes with a curi- 
Mesembryénthe- ous mantel of trailing, fleshy stems and 
mum aequilaterale foliage thickly sprinkled with thousands 
Sar of gaudy flowers. The stems are stout 
Spring : 
California and flattish, several feet long; the leaves 
three-sided, with flat faces, tipped with a 
small reddish point; the calyx-lobes three-sided like the 
leaves. The stems, leaves, and the calyx-lobes are all pale 
bluish-green with a “bloom’”’ and exceedingly succulent, 
the watery juice running out in large drops when the plant 
is broken. The twigs seem to be fitted into a sort of 
socket, from which they come out very easily, so that the 
plant comes apart almost at a touch. The fragrant 
flowers are two or three inches across, bright but crude 
in color, the numerous, purplish-pink petals resembling 
the rays of a composite and encircling a fuzzy ring of 
innumerable stamens, with white, threadlike filaments 
and small, straw-colored anthers, around a dark-green 
center, composed of the top of the calyx and the six to ten 
styles of the ovary. This accommodating plant is very 
useful and ornamental in hot, sandy places, where not 
much else will grow, and may be seen hanging its long stems 
over the sea-cliffs all along the coast, from Patagonia to 
Marin County in California. It also grows in Africa and 
is extensively cultivated. The fruit is edible, with pulp 
and tiny seeds something like a fig. 
IIo 

