62 



THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



trees to blossom, and because of its haste its young fruit is apt 

 to be nipped by frost unless it is grown in an absolutely frost- 

 less place. If we pass this way in summer we shall see the 

 almonds hanging amid the leaves, in shape and look like lean 

 green peaches. The pulp of the almond fruit, however, instead 

 of being juicy and edible as is its peach cousin, is thin and dry, 

 and at maturity splits open, disclosing the nut which is so well 

 beloved at all our feasts. 



On these midwinter cla3^s we see the vinedressers busy 

 among the grapevines, pruning them back. The grapes of 

 southern California vineyards are not of the sorts cultivated in 

 the eastern states — such as the Concord, the Delaware or the 

 Niagara, all of which are developments of native American 

 species — but are of the quite different old-world stock, known 

 to botanists as Vifis vinifcra. It is abundant throughout Pales- 

 tine, and of it was probably that famous cluster which the 

 Children of Israel cut down in the valley of Eshcol. Eacli vine 

 of these old-world grapes, instead of being trained high over 

 trellises as is the case with our eastern grapes, is cut back an- 

 nually to within a foot or two of the ground. Each year adds 

 to the girth of the stumps which in old vineyards look like the 

 stumps of small trees. A southern California vineyard, after 

 its winter pruning, dotted with hundreds of beautyless stumps, 

 is a scene of desolation as great as the burnt vineyards of the 

 Philistines must have l^een after the fire-bearing foxes of Sam- 

 son had overrun them. In the late summer and autumn, how- 

 ever, they are very beautiful and interesting — heaving lakes of 

 green upon the sunny hillsides, disclosing- amid the leaves great 

 clusters of purple and white fruit. 



Another characteristic Bible plant abundant in southern 

 California is the olive. The o]dest olive orchard in the state 

 was planted by the mission fathers at the old Franciscan estab- 

 lishment near San Diego, and one finds about all the old mis- 

 sion remnants of olive vards which are said to have been started 



