THE PERICP BOTPIST. 



Vol. IV. BINGHAMTON, N. Y., MARCH, 1903. No. 3. 



EARLY SPRING IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, 



BY C. F. SAUNDERS, 

 my eastern eyes mid-winter in Southern California, 

 -L after there had been a few rains, offered a very good 

 subs titute for spring. The pastures lay green in the w^arm 

 sunshine and the buds upon the chapparal shrubs were 

 swollen, many of them, to the point of bursting. Along 

 water courses the willow-groundsel was blooming and 

 here and there by the roadside a cluster of yellow poppies 

 would flash a brilliant salutation — reminders that Flora, 

 if she really sleeps at all in this land, sleeps at least with 

 one eye wide open. As early as New Year's, patches of 

 white amid the dun hillside shrubs advertised the so-called 

 California lilac in bloom — not a lilac at all, however, but 

 a western cousin of our old friend of the East, the New 

 Jersey tea {Ceanothus). This genus, readily recognized 

 by its clusters of small flowers with long clawed petals 

 that resemble tiny bonnets elevated on sticks, is repre- 

 sented in California by num^erous tall, shrubby species, 

 some, indeed, attaining the dignity of trees. When in 

 bloom, they are in bloom all over, and their white masses 

 of flowers shine out from the midst of the evergreen scrub- 

 oak brush — a favorite situation — like whitecaps on an 

 emerald sea. 



All this, however, I found was not really spring, which 

 first began to make itself apparent in unmistakable fash- 

 ion about the middle of February. Then I noticed that 

 the gray sycamores that live in the dry river bed by our 

 western hills, had cast the winter wrappings of their buds 

 to the winds, and a tender haze born of the infant leafage 

 had spread through all the tree tops, so that the thirsty 



