6 9 

 A SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CANYON. 



Eastern readers are often puzzled by the meaning of the 

 word canyon, the name being applied to narrow, shallow valleys, 

 to gorges with deep precipitous walls, or to what in England 

 would be called defiles. The mesa lands bordering the coast of 

 Southern California are broad plains, deeply cut by narrow 

 chasms that are always invisible to the eye until one stands upon 

 their very brink. At the bottom of these canyons there is fre- 

 quently, in springtime, a muddy little stream, but through the 

 greater portion of the year only sand and water-worn pebbles 

 and boulders mark their course. The mesas are densely covered 

 with a growth of chaparral, brush composed largely of aden- 

 ostoma, rhus, ceanothus and scrub-oak, but large areas are 

 destitute of perennial vegetable growth, except for the occasional 

 cactuses and undiscouraged forms of earth-lichens, which lend 

 color to the landscape. 



The canyons, too, are often densely wooded with impenetrable 

 thickets of manzanita or other growth ranging about breast 

 high, in which the rabbit and coyote once played hide and seek. 



Among the foothills at the base of the Sierras there are 

 larger and deeper canyons with perennial streams and a ranker 

 growth of vegetation , often arborescent in character. In one of 

 these I spent a few hours with a friend in the latter part of 

 April, and while resting on one of the smoothly- worn boulders 

 of a dry side-arroyo, I made a few notes which may be of interest 

 to others. 



Thk Trkk Poppy. — The canyon slopes for half a mile around 

 me were covered with the brilliant lemon-yellow flowers and 

 pale pea-green foliage of Dendromecon rigidum. The slender, 

 leafy stem of this shrub bears its wealth of beauty at from two 

 to six feet above the ground on a level with the surrounding 

 chaparral. Its flowers are extremely delicate, two to four inches 

 across, much resembling some forms of the Eschscholtzia. The 

 pods burst at maturity, making the seed difficult to gather, so 

 that this shrub has not yet found its way into general cultivation. 

 It does not tranquilly bear transplanting in the way .shrubs are 

 usually handled. 



Thk YERBA SANTA. — A broad, sticky-leaved variety of 

 Eriodiction glutinosum, with large heliotrope-purple flowers, was 

 a near neighbor of the Dendromecon. It was very different from 



