196 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [17:5— May, 1920 



Banning and San Bernardino, whence we came by auto buses 

 yesterday. The warm sun and the abundant rains have brought 

 out the wonderful desert flora. Far and near I see among the 

 rocks on the sides of the canyon walls the barrel cacti, well- 

 described by name. Blossom buds show among the spines on the 

 top. Nothing could be more perfectly protected by Nature than 

 this spine-covered capsule-shaped plant. The largest here are 

 four feet high and two feet in diameter. By chopping out the 

 top in a cone-shaped pit, and churning up the pulpy interior, the 

 thirsty desert traveller can secure a cup of water very palatable, 

 and utterly thirst quenching. 



The vicious cholla, a bristly, oranching cactus, soft olive gray 

 in color, is a plant to avoid contact with on the trail. Its sharp 

 spines are painful to the skin of humans, and they keep going 

 farther in. 



Among the cacti of many kinds are the Eucelia shrubs — the 

 incense plants, a dome of olive green foliage set with an array of 

 yellow flowers in loose spray held up a foot or so from the leafy 

 dome, a delicate gold aura of flowers, of daisy pattern, hovering 

 like flame over the bush, that looks as gray and rounded and solid 

 as a boulder. Various sages add to the gray of desert shrubbery 

 vegetation. 



I would never have expected to find on the bleak mountain side 

 flowers as delicate in texture and color as the hepatica of the eastern 

 spring. 



Before listing these herbaceous, dainty things, I have climbed 

 to the crest of the ridge, — the hermit's cabin on the first ridge is 

 a tiny thing, and automobiles at our camp at the canyon's mouth 

 look like small black beetles. Half a circle of snow covered peaks 

 are in my view. Yet the shadows of the boulders lie on beds of 

 thick green moss ; delicate blue flowered Brodiaea clambers up among 

 the branches of a spiny shrub, satiny yellow-petalled California 

 poppies dot the sides of the trail. The royal purple of the dwarf 

 lupine, the indigo flowers of the wild canterbury bells are as 

 beautiful and as large up here as along the stream banks and road- 

 sides away below me. Clumps of the desert buckwheat are in 

 bloom, the tiny flowers shaded pink and as delicate as arbutus in 

 New England. Miniature white bells crown a plant an inch high. 

 Another ambitious little thing, scarce any taller holds aloft a 

 dozen green pods above a rosette of green leaves and a tap root of 



