THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 



43 



have an agreeable perfume, resembling liquorice. In 

 damp, shaded situations such as would be clothed in the 

 states of the Atlantic border with spring beauties (Clay- 

 tonia Virginica)^ we find in California an abundance of a 

 closely related species (C. per/b/iat a), popularly known as 

 Indian or miner's lettuce. Like the spring beauty, it has 

 fat, succulent leaves, but the blades instead of being all 

 rather linear, are often expanded into round, flat salvers 

 from the center of which the small white flowers arise on 

 a slender stalk. In favored spots the plants make a lush 

 growth and have been used by country folk and Indians 

 as a salad, as the common name implies. Nearly related 

 to this but very different in appearance, is another char- 

 acteristic blossom of early spring, the Calandrinia, whose 

 cheerful, magenta flowers dotting the grass by the way- 

 sides, remind one a little of the portulaca to whose family 

 they belong. 



The phlox family has many charming representatives 

 throughout California in the gilias — a genus of multitud- 

 inous species, one of which, the fringed gilia, is very 

 common in the southern part of the state and wins any- 

 body's heart at first sight. The plant is a delicate little 

 thing, frequently but an inch high and quite overshadowed 

 by the white or pinkish flower which has a yellow center 

 and somewhat resembles the wild pink. 



In this early spring congress of the flowers, the pea 

 tribe takes a prominent part — notably an exquisite lathy- 

 rus that climbs over bushes and adorns its host with 

 drooping garlands of large, svi^eet-pea-like blooms; a 

 shrubby Hosackia, popularly known as deerweed, with 

 graceful, willowy branches decked with umbels of little 

 golden flowers, turning red in age; and many sorts of 

 lupines, one of which is particularly interesting because 

 of its foliage— the leaflets being cut off square at the tips 

 as though snipped by scissors. 



To this floral kaleidoscope, the waterleaf family con- 

 tributes a dash of azure in the genus Nemophila. One 

 species of this, a low, spreading plant with rather coarse 



