t 
PECULIARLY STACCATO IN CHARACTER 
Desert and tropical flora have a certain consanguinity that makes their combination always 
appropriate as in this corner of a California public garden (White’s Park at Riverside) 
GARDENING IN JUNGLE FASHION 
ROY HARRISON DANFORTH 
California the Cosmopolitan Offers a Winning Hospitality to Plants of Many Regions— 
Possibilities of the Tropical Garden as a Distinctly West Coast Type—Where Palms 
Lift High Plumes Against Snow Peaks and Sedums Sit Snugly in Little Rockeries 
HOEVER whimsically launched himself southward 
along New York’s meridian would cross, after some 
three thousand miles as the crow flies, simultaneously 
the equator and the crest of the Cordilleras and descend 
in the state of Oriente to the headwaters of the incomparable 
Amazon. He would come upon a region of jungle masses so 
thickly fabricated of undergrowth as to be almost impenetrable; 
rising out of them divers mighty Palms, Bamboos, Bignonias, 
Bananas, and a multitude of other trees; to the tops of these 
snaky lianas scrambling, the while their feet fought for earth- 
hold with Ferns of a thousand sorts, fat succulents, entangled 
vines, and wiry, huddled clumps of grass. All would be rank, 
lush, moist, vivid; the greens inexpressibly green and with them 
keeping company the richest of yellows, the gaudiest of reds. 
If this traveler more conventionally goes westward three 
thousand miles, but little diverging from New York’s parallel of 
latitude, with less difficulty and more comfort he arrives in a 
country of strikingly similar aspect. Easier access to a race of 
tidy tendencies has permitted clearance of the tropical jungle. 
but here are Palms and Bananas and Rubber-trees achieving 
undreamed dimensions, succulents of as sturdy growth, and 
Ferns not less fair. The greens are just as green, the yellows as 
yellow, the reds no less poignantly red. 
This difference lies between the Ecuadorean country and Cali¬ 
fornia, that the class of vegetation which is indigenous to the 
former is but in a measure indigenous to the latter. Some of 
the thermal flora has, it is true, originated in California, but 
what enters chiefly into the tropical landscape arrangements is 
material that came from abroad. That such growth, whether 
its habitat was Madagascar or Singapore, the Antilles or upper 
Chile or Panama or Mexico, the Nile banks or Arabia, finds con¬ 
ditions in California peculiarly to its liking, elucidates much of 
the success of tropical gardening here. With a climate more 
temperate, with aridity replacing the tropics’ heavy precipita¬ 
tion, California still offers a haven to these strange plants which 
they joyfully accept. 
In a region, then, where a common view of mountain peaks 
white with perpetual snow is across groups of Palms and Agaves, 
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