12 



Introduction 



pecans, glossy-leaved cottonwoods, sycamores with pale, flaky 

 trunks, spiny, gum elastics, warty-barked hackberries, willows, 

 cypress with roots that drink from the water-soaked margins 

 and beneath the stream bed, hawthornes, cedar elms, fragrant- 

 blossomed plums, black walnuts, pale-leaved box elders and rank 

 growths of poison oak, mustang grapes and woodbines. Other 

 moisture loving plants growing here, are the fringy-rayed daisy- 

 fleabane, white and pale-blue violets, thick mats of bedstraw, 

 deep but delicately shaded red and purple verbenas, baby blue 

 eyes, rough-leaved false gromwell, purple Dutchman's pipe 

 (Clematis), the late flowing frostweed, and deep blue day 

 flowers and their close relatives the purple spiderworts. Viewed 

 from a hill, this dense growth of the river banks contrasts 

 strongly with the thinner vegetation of the hills. 



Mitchell's Lake Region shows the transformation that takes 

 place on the margin of an increasing water area. The land now 

 inundated was once typical mesquite country as is evidenced by 

 the number of dead trees of this species still standing half buried 

 throughout the numerous small bays and the shallower portions 

 of the lake. Marking the progress of the Lake in its increased 

 depth and area are the amphibious rattle bushes (Daubentonia 

 longifolia). These plants vary from healthy full sized shrubs at 

 the margins to equally large plants struggling for existence in a 

 half buried condition farther out from the shore. Even in this 

 half drowned condition, they continue to live for years and 

 throughout the summer produce a wealth of hanging clusters of 

 deep yellow butterfly-shaped flowers. The rapidity with which 

 hydrophytic plants find suitable places for their development is 

 of marked interest. Small islets of tules dot the lake in the 

 shallower parts and cat-tails outline parts of the margin. 

 Anchored to the marshy bottoms in the shallower and wind 

 protected parts are a mass of floating plants — white pond lilies 

 and yellow star grass, a member of the evening primrose family. 

 Growing on the muddy shores or in shallow water are sedges, 

 srnartweed, heliotrope, sunflowers, reddish topped dock, water 



