PEA FAMILY. Fabaceae. 
This little spiny desert shrub grows two 
Paroséla Cali- : : " 
fornica (Dalea) °F three feet high and is conspicuous on ac- 
Blue count of the odd contrast in color between 
Spring its foliage and flowers. The woody stems 
California 
and branches are very pale in color and the 
very small leaflets, so narrow and stiff that they look like 
evergreen needles, are covered with pale down and have 
glandular dots. All over this colorless foliage are sprinkled 
small spikes of indigo-blue flowers, so dark in color that the 
effect, against a background of desert sand, is of pale gray, 
speckled with black. It has a pleasant smell like balsam. 
wire A low, desert shrub, with slender, 
Paroséla Emoryi 
(Dalea) abruptly branching stems and small, soft, 
Magenta thickish leaves, usually with three leaflets, 
Spring, summer obscurely toothed, the stems and leaves 
- cagarately eh all thickly covered with white down. The 
flower-clusters are about three-quarters of an inch across, 
like a small clover-head, the woolly calyxes giving a 
yellowish-gray effect to the whole cluster, which is orna- 
mented with a circle of tiny purple flowers. The effect of 
these specks of dark color on the pale bush is odd; the 
plant smells like balsam and grows in sandy soil. 
This is the only kind, an evergreen 
Chaparral Pea = shrub, flourishing on dry hills in the Coast 
X ylothérmia : 
Suuene Ranges, with tough, crooked branches 
(Pickeringia) and stout spines, forming chaparral so 
Crimson dense that it is impossible to penetrate. 
Spring, summer 
California 
It grows from three to eight feet high, the 
gnarled, knotty, black branches _ter- 
minating in long spines, which are often clothed with small 
leaves nearly to the end, the leaves with one to three, 
small leaflets and without stipules. The bush is often 
covered with quantities of pretty, bright, deep purplish- 
pink flowers, three-quarters of an inch long, forming a 
fine mass of color. The calyx has four, short, broad teeth; 
the petals are equal, the standard roundish, with the sides 
turned back and a paler spot at base, the wings oblong, the 
keel straight; the filaments of the ten stamens not united; 
the pod is two inches long, flat, straight, sickle-shaped when 
young. This very rarely produces fruit. Stevenson was 
probably describing this shrub when he wrote, “Even the 
low thorny chaparral was thick with pea-like blossoms.” 
248 

Net eee! “aa Borage. 
