UC-NRLF IN THEIR HOMES g ..... L.IBRARV OK THK UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. OK ll. &. Received " Accession No. ^- ^-L Cla&s No. -r\ YUCCA WHIPPLEI. CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES A BOTANICAL READER TOR CHILDREN BY ALICE MERR1TT DAVIDSON Formerly Teacher of Botany in the State Normal School, Los Angeles, California. IVERSITY -i-iJ.lfc3.LJ. J. I ILLUSTRATED BY ALICE C. COOPER AND MARY E. LEWIS 1898 B. R. BAUMGARDT & CO Los ANGELES, CAL. COPYRIGHT, 1898 BY ALICE MERRITT DAVIDSON CONTENTS. PAGE. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 10 PREFACE 13 CHAPTER 1 17 Some Plants that lead Easy Lives. CHAPTER II 25 How Some Plants begin Life : Seedlings. CHAPTER III 39 Plants that know how to meet Hard Times : Autumn Plants. CHAPTER IV 51 Some Plants that do not make their own Living : Fungi. CHAPTER V 61 After the Rains : Winter Plants. CHAPTER VI 72 Ferns and their Relatives. CHAPTER VII 85 Some Early Flowers. CHAPTER VIII 100 The Awakening of the Trees. CHAPTER IX no Some Spring Flowers. CHAPTER X 126 Plants with Mechanical Genius : Lupine, Alfalfa and Fil- aree. CHAPTER XI 138 Plants of High Rank : Bilabiate Flowers. CHAPTER XII 151 Social Flowers : Composite. CHAPTER XIII 160 Plant Families : Part I. Endogens or Monocotyledons. CHAPTER XIV . 172 Plant Families : Part II. Exogens or Dicotyledons. CHAPTER XV 183 Some Summer Flowers. CHAPTER XVI 200 Weeds. Errata 212 Books of Reference 213 Pronunciation of Botanical Names 215 ILLUSTRATIONS. FIG. PAGE 1. Water-net Hydrodictyon 18 2. A Brown Alga, or Kelp Macrocystis 20 3. A Red Alga Plocamium coccineum 23 4. Some Green Algae 23 5. Castor-oil Plant Ricinus, Germination of Seed 26 6. Germination of Pine Seed 28 7. Germination of Some Common Dicotyledonous Seeds 30 8. Germination of Acorn 31 9. Germination of Some Monocotyledenous Seeds 35 10. Castor-oil Plant, Cellular Structure 36 11. Wild Broom Lotus glaber 45 12. Eriogonum elongatum 45 13. A Summer Composite Malacothrix tenuifolia 46 14. Turkey -weed Eremocarpus setigera 47 15. Plants of the Dry Season 40 16. Plant Hairs under the Microscope 50 17. Mould 53 18. Lichens 55 19. Some Common Fungi 58 20. Early Seedlings 62 21. Seedlings spread out to the Sun 63 22. Early Growth from Underground Storehouses 65 23. Chilicothe Micrampelis macrocarpa 67 24. Wild Currant Ribes glutinosum 69 25. Wild Gooseberry Ribes amarum 70 26. Polypodium Californicum 73 27. Some Early Fern Fronds 76 28. Fragments of Spore-bearing Fronds 78 29. Scouring Rush, or Horsetail Equisetum 82 30. Young Ferns and Liverworts 83 31. Peony Ptzonia Californica 86 32. Buttercup Ranunculus Californicus 88 ILL USTRA TIONS. 33. Cluster Lily Brodi&a Capitata 91 34. Violet Viola pedunculata 94 35. Shooting Star Dodecatheon Clevelandi 96 36. Calla 98 37. Willow , loi 38. Young Shoots of Trees 103 39. Peach Blossoms io.s 40. Pine and Cypress 106 41. Poppy and Cream-cup. in 42. Primrose CEnothera bistorta 113 43. Gilias 115 44. The Climbing Nemophila Nemophila aurita 117 45. Some Members of the Blue-Byes Family 118 46. White Forget-me-not Plagiobothrys nothofulvus 120 47. Nightshade Solatium Douglasii 122 48. Mariposas , 124 49. Lupine Lupinus sparsiflorus 127 50. Alfalfa and Bur-Clover 130 51. Filaree Erodium cicutarium ^134 52. Monkey-Flower Mimulus glutinosus 139 53. Innocence Collinsia bicolor 141 54. Owl's Clover and Painted Cup 143 55. Violet Pentstemon Pentstemon heterophyllus 145 56. Little Chia Salvia Columbaria 147 57. Sages Audibertia stachyoides and A. polystachya 149 58. Sunflower Helianthus annuus 152 59. Thistle Cnicus occidentalis 156 60. An Umbellifera Peucedanum utriculatum 158 61. Blue-Byed Grass Sisyrinchium bellum 165 62. Yucca Yucca Whipplei. (See also Frontispiece) 167 63. Wild Oats Avena fatua 169 64. Yerba Mansa Anemopsis Californica 173 65. Larkspur Delphinium Parryi 185 66. Milkweed Asclepias eriocarpa 188 67. Cactus Opuntia Lindheimeri, var. occidentalis 190 68. Dodder on Eriogonmn fasciculatum 192 69. Godetia Bottcs and Clarkia elegans 195 70. Indian Pink Silene laciniata 195 71. Climbing Pentstemon Pentstemon cordifolius 196 72. Pasture Weeds 206 73. Wayside Weeds 209 For alphabetical list, see index. PREFACE. The aim of this book is to foster children's love for na- ture and for out of door life by stimulating their interest in living plants, and by leading them to study the habits of their plant neighbors. Out of door life is possible in Cali- fornia all the year round, but to avail one's self fully of this great panacea for mental and physical ills, one must have capacity for enjoying it. There is no stronger incentive to this sort of recreation than genuine enthusiasm for some branch of nature study. No one who has gone into the fields with children, doubts their readiness to acquire this resource, but there must be guidance that leads to keener observation, to a growing acquaintance with nature and a deepening interest in her ways. A book can hardly meet the full requirements of a guide, but supplemented by the direction and sympathy of parent or teacher, it may be of much service. Of course these "plants in their homes," should be under the actual observation of the children. The only plants treated at all fully are such as the author has found easily accessible in Southern California, and most of them are common throughout the state. That the study of some of them necessitates special excursions to canon or hillside, is no objection. The greater number, however, are the plants we meet without leaving beaten paths; the filaree and bur-clover, for instance, serve often for illustration, and PREFACE our common weeds have a chapter to themselves. The aim is to awaken interest in common plants, and to invest them with new meaning. Pond-scums, mould and toad-stools are included among these familiar plants, and sea-mosses, lichens and ferns are believed to be as attractive as flower- ing plants. Much concerning the lives and habits of these lower plants can be learned without a microscope, but the results of microscopic study of these and of higher plants are not ignored in the Reader. The book attempts to introduce children to a wide cir- cle of plants. Entire, living plants are considered, and leading facts concerning their physiology and their rela- tions to their environment are pointed out. A detailed study of the structure of plant fragments is not suggested. The value of rigorous laboratory training to mature minds is undeniable, but experience seems to prove that the meth- ods of a college laboratory are not suited to children. In plant study children can be led to see and seek and think for themselves, but their natural interest is in salient fea- tures not in minute details, and their curiosity is concerning uses, not structure. In California, parents and teachers who would gladly undertake rational plant study with their children, are con- fronted by our peculiar climatic conditions, which render the courses of study and the plant literature of other regions ill adapted to our needs. It is in response to many expres- sions of need for some literature of our own in this line, that this book has been undertaken. It records observa- tions made during ten years of much out of door life in Southern California. They are offered, not for the sake of any definite results obtained, but for the purpose of stimu- lating like observations and for comparison. Much auxil- iary matter, directions, definitions, physiological facts and theories, and the like, must accompany observation work to render it intelligible. In school work this matter must PREFACE be dictated or written by the teacher. The Reader is de- signed to save this labor, that is, to supplement observation work, but by no means to supplant it. The Supplement to the Reader has been written with the needs of teachers in mind. It contains many additional details; the plants are described more fully and their botan- ical names are given. Such facts of structural and physio- logical botany as the writer has found specially useful during considerable experience in teaching, have been in- serted. In an appendix, suggestions for the use of the Reader in the school-room are offered, and a course of plant study for California school children is outlined. A short list of available botanical works is also given. In the preparation of the book, the usual botanical authorities have been consulted. Kerner's " Natural His- tory of Plants ' ' has suggested and inspired investigation along various lines. Direct assistance in every way has been given by the writer's husband, Dr. Anstruther Davidson. Many thanks are due to Miss Harriet E. Dunn for aid in revising the manuscript and to Mrs. J. Crossley Neilson and Prof. Everett Shepardson for assistance in proof read- ing. The drawings, nearly all of them from nature, have been contributed by former pupils in the Normal School at lyOS Angeles, most of them being the work of Miss Cooper and Miss Lewis. Miss Ada M. Laughlin, teacher of drawing in the same school, has been most helpful. FOOT NOTE. It has not generally been practicable to reproduce the drawings natural size, or to an exact scale. Most of the flowering plants are reduced about one-fourth. The number of times magnified is indicated by the sign, x. CHAPTER I. SOflE PLANTS THAT LEAD EASY LIVES. There is a story told of a very lazy boy who lived in a beautiful sunny garden. The garden was full of trees that bore delicious fruit, but to gather this fruit was quite too much trouble for the lazy boy ; so he spent his days lying under the trees where, when he was hungry, he had only to open his mouth and the fruit dropped into it. Now there are plants the world over that seem to live about as easily as the lazy boy ; I mean plants that live in the water, for their food consists only of water and what is dissolved in it ; so they lie in a bath containing their food and have only to absorb what they need. Nearly all California children have noticed in reser- voirs, water ditches or ponds, a green scum floating along the edges or on the top. Perhaps you have not looked at it very closely, nor thought of it as made up of little plants. Take some of it now, put it in water in a white dish, and examine it carefully. Perhaps all of it will be soft and slimy, but you are likely to find some that clearly consists of threads or nets. The green net is called water-net. If you have found good specimens you will see that the nets are really little closed bags, perhaps like drawing No. i, Fig. i, or they may be more slender. Sometimes the bags are several inches long, and the nets coarse, that is, the holes or 2 17 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES ' Fig. 1. WATER-NET Hydyodictyon. \. Colony, x 5. 2. Tip of net, x 15. 3. Single mesh, x 40. I. One cell, x 75. meshes are large; but the large nets are easily torn, and are likely to be found in ragged bits. There are usually plenty of smaller nets ; if you have sharp eyes you may find some not more than one-eighth of an inch long. Drawing No. 2 is one end of one of these tiny nets as it looks under the microscope, and No. 3 is one of the meshes still more enlarged. Take the coarsest net you have, and find out how many sides the meshes have. How long is the longest side you can find ? No. 4 is a drawing of one side of a mesh under the microscope. So we see that each side of any mesh is itself a little closed bag or sac filled with something. This sac with its contents is called a cell; the sac is transparent, and is called the cell wall. The jelly-like substance within seems to be green, and there are grains in it, some very small, others larger. After water-net has been kept in alcohol for a day or so, the alcohol becomes green and the net is left colorless, but otherwise the cells look just as they did before. This coloring matter, which is dissolved by the alcohol, is a very important part of plants, so important 18 that it is best to learn at once the long name the botanists have given it; it is called chlorophyll. The jelly-like granular substance that still lies close to the cell wall is another very wonderful substance ; it is present in every living part of every plant and animal ; in your own bodies as well ; it is called protoplasm. Now put some of your water-net in a dish of water in the sun. In a short time you will see little bubbles all about it. If you found the net yourself, growing in a sunny place, you probably noticed that there were so many bubbles entangled with it that the whole mass looked like green froth. It is possible to collect the bubbles that the net gives off, and to find out that they are bubbles of oxygen, a gas that we must have in the air we breathe, in order to live at all. Dissolved in the water, is another gas that all living things are constantly breathing out ; it is called carbonic acid gas. This gas is the most important food material for plants, and these little water plants are drinking it in with the water all day long. Now the cells of the plants are little work-shops or laboratories. The materials used are water and carbonic acid. Each of these materials consists of oxygen united with something else, and in every cell the protoplasm, with the help of chlorophyll and sunlight, breaks up this raw material, uses what it needs to make its food, and gives off the oxygen that is left over into the air for us and for animals generally. The food that the cell manufactures is called organic matter ; it is food for animals as well as for plants. The water-net uses some of it at once for its own growth, but some of it is stored for future use in the form of starch. In the picture of the cell, the larger dots represent little stores of starch. When little water-nets grow up, that is, when each cell becomes as large as it can be, what do you suppose happens next? If there is plenty of food, the protoplasm 19 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES Fig. 2. A BROWN ALGA, or KELP CMacrocystis. 1. Tip of branch, % natural size, 2. Holdfast of small plant. 20 in any cell may divide into very many minute particles, into from seven thousand to twenty thousand the botanists tell us. Now each bit of protoplasm, which may be called a protoplast, is able to do a wonderful thing; it can make a room for itself just as a snail can make its own house. So all these seven thousand or more protoplasts enclose themselves in transparent walls, and the old cell wall ha.s within it a multitude of new Cells. Can you guess the rest of the story? The tiny new cells move about, arrange themselves into a net, and grow together ; the old cell wall breaks, and the tiny new net floats out to begin life by itself. In our sunny summer days the pools are filled up rapidly with new nets ; but since our rainless season is so long, the pools may dry up, and then the nets must die. Botanists tell us that, as this danger approaches, the proto- plasts into which a cell divides, escape at once into the water and swim about for a time ; then two protoplasts from different cells may unite to form a cell that behaves like a seed ; that is, one which can rest a long time and can stand drought and heat or cold until it has a good chance to grow into a new plant. There are many other kinds of green Algae, as these scums are called. Some of them are very beautiful under the microscope, and many interesting things have been found out about them. You may have a chance to study them yourselves in higher schools. In the ocean, too, are plants that get all of their food from the water, though not all of them can be said to live easy lives. Often they grow on rocks where the waves are constantly breaking. Perhaps you can imagine, if you have been in the surf yourselves, how these plants are pounded, tossed and twisted by the breakers. The brown Algae, or rock weeds and kelps, are the most common plants along the shore. Have you ever noticed how they are fastened to the rocks ? No. 2, Fig. 2, is a drawing of one kind of 21 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES holdfast. Sometimes the holdfasts are very large, with many branches. You may have seen them on the beach after a storm. Some are solid instead of branched. If you have tried to pull kelps from the rocks where they are growing, you know that these holdfasts rarely let go. You must either scrape them off with a knife or break the stem ; and how tough they are ! They seem almost like leather. It is no wonder that they can stand so much beating by the waves. One kind of kelp common on our coast is called Macro- cystis. No. i, Fig. 2, is a reduced drawing of one end of a branch. Plants several yards long are frequently washed up on our beaches, and travelers tell us that some plants grow a quarter of a mile long. Children often strip off the leaves, and use the stems for skipping-ropes, because they are so strong and flexible. The leaves of this kelp are full of blisters, and at the base of each leaf is a pear-shaped air sac. Can you think out the use to the plant of the blisters and the air sacs? Notice how the new leaves start' at the end of the stem. Do leaves of land plants begin in that way ? Fig. 3 is a photograph of one of our red sea mosses. It is often thrown up on the beach during storms, and it is still very pretty after it has been floated out on white paper and dried. Most bright red Algae grow in rather deep water, and so do not get as much light as plants that float near the surface. The red color changes what light they get, so that is most useful to the plant for food-making. Of course the ocean plants are in no danger from lack of water. They are sometimes badly torn by storms, but this is not always misfortune. If the pieces happen to reach a favorable place, they grow fast and become new plants. There are crabs that seem to know this fact, for they cut off bits of sea mosses with their claws, and place them on little hooks on their shells. The plants grow there, and hide the crabs from their enemies. 22 ALGsE Fig. 3. A RED A.'L.GA.TIocamiiim coccineum. Portion of frond, natural size. Fig. 4. SOME GREEN 1. Conjugating filaments of Spirogyra. 2. Fragment of filament of Spirogyra. 3 and 4. Zygnema. 5 and 6. Cladophora. 5, x 4, others, x 50. 23 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES You will, perhaps, think that these sea plants have no chlorophyll, and so cannot manufacture food as the water- net does. But the chlorophyll is there in plenty, hidden by the brown or red color. You can see this for yourselves in pieces that have been faded in the sun on the beach, or in pieces you have kept in fresh water. So we see that although water plants get their raw material easily, the pretty red sea mosses and the big kelps, as well as the little water-net, are busy all day long making up this material into useful food substance, at the same time setting free oxygen for the general good. Perhaps it was not quite fair to compare them with the lazy boy. SEEDLINGS CHAPTER II. HOW SOME PLANTS BEGIN LIFE. Plants that have seeds are called higher plants, because they give their children, the seeds, such a good start in the world. Take the castor bean for- an example. On the home plant, each seed has a room to itself in the little ball of a house. It seems quite safe in the strong walls defended by stiff little prickles; but suddenly, on a sunny day, the walls of the little room split open, sometimes with such force that the seed is flung far out into the world . For a time it lies on the ground exposed, as one might think, to many dangers; really the seed is protected by its hard coat, and by being poisonous. Soon, too, it becomes buried in the dust, where it waits with other seeds for the rain and sunshine to waken it. Soak some castor beans in water, and you will see how the little knob at one end acts like a sponge in taking up water. Plant the seeds, and in a week or so a little white sprout pushes out where the knob was. Do you think this sprout a root or a stem? Really it is both, as you can see by watching, for the root grows steadily downward, but the stem part grows upward and becomes a long, narrow arch, that lifts the earth above it, and finally breaks through. Meanwhile the rest of the seed swells and bursts its coat. What is now the outside part is a white, 25 Fig. 5. CASTOR-OII, PLANT Ricinus. Germination of the seed. SEEDLINGS oily substance, that feels and cuts a little"^ like cheese; within this are two pale little leaves pressed together. Now take an unsprouted seed, and see if you can find these leaves and the beginnings of the stem and root inside the white substance. Think out the uses of this white substance. At first it protects the baby plant; later, by swelling, it bursts the coat; but watch it as the seedling grows; the seed-leaves grow larger and thicker, but, at the same time, this sub- stance gets thinner and thinner until it is a mere worthless film. Clearly, this is the food the leaves absorb for their own growth and for the young stem and roots. Be sure to see how the seed-leaves escape from the soil. For some time only the little arched stem appears above ground. The roots fasten one end of it firmly in the soil, so that as it grows, it must be always pulling at the buried leaves at the other end. Finally the leaves are brought above ground; they turn green and unfold, and now, because they have chlorophyll and light, they begin food- making. But let us look into the history of a few more seeds. High up in the pine trees, tucked away in the thick-walled chambers, often protected by savage spines, are the pine seeds. The trees seem very unwilling to part with their children, for they sometimes keep them shut up in these pine-cone nurseries for several years before they have done fitting them out for their journey. It really is a journey, for when the cones finally open, each seed has a wing on which it is carried far from the home tree. Now these seeds are actually in danger, for the food the parent tree has been so long preparing for them is very good for animals too. Squirrels are so eager for pine seeds that they do not always wait to find them on the ground, but climb the trees, and actually cut through the thick, woody walls of the cones with their sharp teeth. But the 27 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES squirrels bury some of the seeds for future use, and if they forget where they have hidden them, or if they do not live to eat them, the pine seeds are well planted . Some of our moun- tain pines have large seeds called pine nuts or piflons. These seeds have enemies with hands as well as enemies with sharp teeth. They are gathered in great quantities by the In- dians for winter sup- plies; they are also sent to our city mar- kets. The pinon has a hard shell, within which an abundance of food is packed about the tiny plant. You will think at first that the baby plant has only a stem, but if you look closely you will find at one end a cluster of very short, thick, white seed- leaves, which can grow into little green needles like other pine leaves. Pifions grow so very slowly that it is better to plant smaller pig.?. GERMINATION OF PINE SEED. 28 SEEDLINGS pine seeds that will come above ground, and look like tiny pine trees, in a month or so. The sprouting pine seeds behave, in many respects, like the castor beans, but the swelling food does not burst the seed coat. Instead of this, the coat is brought above ground by the growing, arched stem, and the leaves remain inside, safe and warm, until they have absorbed all the food. In the picture you can see one way they have of getting rid of their coat. Your seed-leaves may behave differently. There are many common seeds that you can grow more quickly than the pine and castor bean, such as the morning glory, common bean, squash, pea, peanut, nasturtium, corn, wheat and onion. The morning glory seed has the baby plant and its store of food snugly stored away in the small- est possible space. The common bean has a different plan for storing food; as you remove the seed coat, you see that the two bodies into which the seed separates are attached to the little stem instead of being packed about it. When these bodies are dragged into the light, they become green, and spread out from the stem, like leaves. In fact, they are the seed-leaves just as truly as were the thinner, prettier leaves of the castor bean and morning glory, but the bean seed-leaves have the food which they furnish to the grow- ing plant stored within them instead of about them. They use none of this food for their own growth, but as their supplies are used by the rest of the seedling, they shrivel and finally drop off. By this time, the next two leaves, which were distinct even in the seed, have grown into good food-makers. The two seed-leaves of the squash also have their food stored inside, but they use part of it for themselves and become veiy good food-making, or foliage, leaves. Do not miss the clever trick of the squash leaves by which they get rid of the hard outside coat or shell. The stem grows a 29 Fig. 7. GERMINATION OF SOME COMMON DICOTYLEDONOUS SEEDS. 1. Morning glory. 2. Pumpkin. 3. Pea. 4. Common bean. 30 Fig. 8. GERMINATION OF ACORN. 31 SEEDLINGS little knob that pins down one side of the shell, while the arching part of the stem pries up the other side. The pea has even thicker seed-leaves than the bean, but they do not try at all to imitate foliage leaves; they are content to be simply store-houses and to remain under ground, where they are really better off. This leaves the little shoot between them to push up through the ground alone. Does it push straight up, or appear first as an arch? Which of these seed- lings does the nastur- tium most resemble ? The peanut ? Later in the season keep a sharp lookout for acorns or walnuts that have germinated among the fallen leaves under the trees. In the picture of the sprouting acorn, can you point out the seed- leaves ? Should you like to know the Greek and CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES Latin names that botanists have given to the parts of seeds ? Seed-leaves are called cotyledons; the little stem in the seed is the caulicle; the beginning root at one end of it is the radicle; the little bud at the other end, plainly seen in the bean, pea and peanut, is called the plumule; the entire baby plant is called the embryo; when food is stored out- side of the embryo, it is called endosperm; when the embryo begins to grow, botanists say that the seed is germinating. The parts of a kernel of corn are not easily made out. The greater part of the kernel is hard and yellow; it shrinks as the seedling grows, and is, clearly, the store of food. Lying closely against this on one side of the kernel is a paler, softer part, and this part is wrapped about a little white rod. When the seed is kept in water for a day or so, you can see that this softer white part swells, and acts like a sponge; that is, it does just what seed-leaves, or cotyle- dons, always do, it absorbs food for the rest of the seed -plant. So we must consider it a cotyledon, although it does not look at all like a leaf, and it always remains below ground with the endosperm. As the seed germinates, the nature of the little white rod is soon revealed. The upper part shoots upward, and is seen to consist of rolled-up leaves, so it should be called the plumule. The stem part, or caulicle, to which the cotyledon is fastened, does not grow rapidly, but at its lower end the radicle lengthens into a main root; side roots are also sent out. Since the stem does not grow up into an arch, the plumule must push straight up through the soil, but the outside leaf protects the rest, and does not attempt to become a foliage leaf itself. When the stem finally comes above ground, notice the circle of staying roots, like tent-ropes. The onion seed is very small to study, but it is easy to see that the rolled-up leaves come out as an arch, the tips remaining inside the shell, while the roots grow from the short stem at the base. The onion, like the corn, has one 32 Fig. 9-GERMINATION OF SOME MONOCOTYLEDONOUS SEEDS. 1. Onion. 2. Wheat, x 5. 3. Indian corn. CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES cotyledon, which is wrapped about the rest of the embryo, and it is a cotyledon of many uses. It protects the embryo, carries it out of the shell, plants it in the soil, carries it food from the seed's storehouse, and in the meantime becomes a good foliage leaf itself. Palm seeds, too, have single coty- ledons which plant their embryos so deep that they are in little danger from drought. One palm has huge seeds weighing fifteen pounds or more; the cotyledon carries the embryo down a foot and a half in the soil, and feeds it there nearly a year before leaving it to care for itself. As the rains come, keep watch for seedlings that may spring up along the wayside or in fields, vacant lots or gardens. See if they first appear as arches, and if you can find the seed-leaves. As the plumules unfold, see how many of the plants you can recognize. We have seen how seeds are prepared to begin life by the parent plants ; let us think of what. the seedlings do for themselves. While the little plant is yet entirely within the seed-coat, it drinks in water from the outside world, and the water dissolves this stored food, and helps to change some of it so that it can be used for growth. As soon as the first white shoot pushes out, it begins to fit itself to supply water. Watch some kernels of corn germi- nate on moist blotting-paper. The tip of the root is hard and smooth, but back of the tip, the root is covered with dense fuzz, and every hair of this fuzz is a thin-walled cell that eagerly drinks in all the water it can get from the moist air. Roots that grow in the soil have root-hairs too, but the soil clings to them and hides them. They are not usually so long as those you see on the corn, but they are sometimes so dense that the head of a common pin can cover a hundred or more. Now, as a root grows, it does not lengthen everywhere as you do. If you will mark a corn root with ink, as in the picture, you will see that only the part just back of the tip 34 SEEDLINGS grows. So the root-hairs that came out first have another use ; they unite their part of the root firmly with the soil, and as the growing part lengthens, it, too, sends out hairs to anchor it, as well as to supply water. A great English naturalist, Darwin, found out some wonderful things about the sturdy little root- tips. They are really pioneers and explorers, for they have the power of moving in little circles as they are pushed on by the growing part, and they are also sensitive to hard substances and to moisture ; so they are actually able to avoid many dangerous or difficult places, and to pilot the growing root into the very best places for moisture and food. Take a corn seedling that has been growing for a month or so, remove it from the soil without breaking any of the roots, if possible, and measure the length of all the roots on a string. Now remember, that every root is clothed with root-hairs, and through these thousands of absorbing cells, your seedling has been taking in water. With the water enters what is dissolved in it, and the plants really require much of this dissolved matter. The gas, nitrogen, which is necessary for making protoplasm, is prepared in the soil so that it can be carried up the plant by the water ; the soil also supplies necessary minerals, such as iron and sulphur. But all this raw material must be worked over into organic plant food, and, as we learned from the water-net, the food-making must begin where there is chlorophyll and sunlight, that is, above ground. The path by which this raw material travels up to the workshops, can be easily shown by putting a seedling in water colored with red ink. Soon you will see the red fluid creeping up the woody strands or veins that run through the leaves. By cutting thin slices of root and stem, you will see that the fluid here, too, ascends through woody fibres. You remember that the water-net was made up of cells. So are all plants. The 35 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES castor-oil seedling, for instance, is really a community of millions of protoplasts, each living in a room made by itself. To see this you must have very thin slices of the plant under the microscope. The little rooms or cells are by no means all alike. To give you some idea of what the cells of the stem are like, two slices, one crosswise and one lengthwise, have been combined in drawing No. 2, Fig. 10, Fig. 10. CASTOR-OIL PI,ANT Acinus. 1. Epidermis, x 75. 2. Cellular structure of stem, x 150. (Diagramatic.) Some cells, you see, are like the water-net cells, with thin walls ; others are much more slender and have thicker walls ; others are very long and have curious markings on their walls. These last two kinds of cells make up woody fibre like those colored by the ink. No. i, in the same drawing is the skin, or epidermis, of the leaf under the microscope. Most of the cells are thin and flat, and fit closely together like tiles, but among them are pairs of cells with openings between them, so that each pair resembles open lips. The openings are called pores, or SEEDLINGS stomata, and their two guard cells can close together when it is best for the plant. Very little water can pass through the outer cell walls of the epidermis, but when the stomata are open, water given off by any cells within the leaf can pass through the stomata into the air. Notice that the upper side of the castor-oil leaf is a darker green than the lower. This is because the cells here are packed very closely together, and also because they have a good supply of chlorophyll. The sun shines directly on them during the warmest part of the day. These cells, then, are the workshops, or laboratories, where the food- making begins. The most important material for making organic food is carbonic acid gas. This is taken directly from the air by the cells of the epidermis, and is passed on through their walls to the laboratory cells. The rest of the raw material is brought by the woody fibres. Just how this crude sap is drawn up, is not easy to explain. The sun helps to raise it, and the eager root-hairs and other cells force it up, but not even the wisest students profess to know all about it. Not nearly all of the water brought to the leaves is used by them. Shut up some of your seedlings in a fruit jar, and in a few moments moisture will be seen on the sides of the jar. This is because the leaves are constantly giving off moisture through their stomata. That is, there is a constant current of water streaming up through plants by way of the woody tissue, and much of the water is used simply to carry the other materials for food-making from the root-hairs to the laboratory cells. In manufacturing food, the protoplasm, helped by the sunlight and chlorophyll, breaks up carbonic acid and gives off oxygen. The oxygen escapes through the stomata, and you can see bubbles of it if you put plants under water in the sunlight. But this is only a small part of the story of what goes on in the laboratory cells of plants. This first 37 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES organic food must be further worked up into many, many substances. All our seedlings must make more protoplasm, more cell walls, more chlorophyll, and other colors, perhaps, to paint the flowers with ; the castor-oil plant will make one kind of oil, the peanut another, the corn and wheat will make quantities of starch, each plant will manufacture what gives it its peculiar taste or odor, and so on. Did you ever think how many of the things that you eat and wear and use in other ways every day, were originally made by plants ? Surely you will admit that these little cell- laboratories are very wonderful shops indeed. This making over of the first organic food into other substances goes on by night as well as by day ; often other cells finish what was begun in the leaf cells. The finished products, too, must be distributed to just the places that need them. This is done by quite a different set of cells from those that carried up raw material. So we see that in this little plant- community of millions of cells, each one has its own part to do, and not one is useless or idle. 38 AUTUMN PLANTS CHAPTER III. PLANTS THAT KNOW HOW TO MEET HARD TIMES. We talk of hard times when money is hard to get, because we want money to pay for food and clothing and shelter. These things the plants make for themselves, but they must have warmth and material to work with. Our California climate is kind to plants in supplying warmth , and the air and soil are constantly furnishing materials that plants require, but oh, how much water they need! Water as part of their food, water for dissolving all other food, and water for carrying food from roots to leaves. In many parts of California, however, there is little or no rain for half the year; so from May to November there are hard times indeed for California plants. When these hard times come, some plants give up at once, the bur-clover, for instance, the filaree and many grasses. During the warmer rainy months they have lived fast and have made haste to store up food for their many, many seeds, but they themselves do not try to live through the dry season. It is these dead plants that, by the first of June, give California fields and hills their summer tints of brown and gold. There are other plants that store up food for them- selves, usually below ground; as the dry season advances, the leaves which give off so much precious moisture are dropped, and perhaps the shoots die back nearly or quite CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES to the ground; but beneath the soil the plant still lives, although it takes a long summer nap. We shall watch the waking of these plants when the rains come. Still other plants bravely go right on growing through the long, dry summer. If they live along streams or in shaded canons, they have not a hard task, for in such places there is water beneath the surface of the soil that the fierce sun cannot quite drink up. So when the rest of the country seems brown and bare, we have along stream beds, lines of willows and cotton woods, alders with their clean, straight trunks, great branching sycamores, and perhaps smaller plants with pretty flowers. In our canons and on steep, shaded slopes we have a great many plants that grow and flourish throughout the summer. The hardy nightshade and the wild broom go 011 flowering as they do in the other seasons, year after year. The poison oak is able to keep its beautiful glossy leaves; the California holly blossoms and gets ready to ripen its berries for Christmas; the clematis carries its fluffy seeds high up where they can get a good start in the world, and the grape vines spread out their leaves to the light. But there are less sheltered hills and open fields and waysides on which the sun beats all the long, cloudless days; these places, too, have some plants that do not rest during the summer and autumn. Collect all such plants that you can find on a September or October day. Get the roots when you can; at least dig for them until you know something about their length. Now try to describe your collection. It will not contain a single bright green plant. The leaves are all dull green or grey; sometimes because they have hard, thick skins, more often because they have hairy coats. These coats are not fine, silky or velvety ones, such as young leaves often wear in spring-time; they may be fleecy, or they may feel like felt or flannel, or the hairs may be very short, but they are rough and coarse; often, 40 AUTUMN PLANTS too, they are sticky or prickly and are very disagreeable. Some of your plants will have small leaves, or else few leaves; and you may find some with no leaves at all. The stems may be hairy like the leaves, and are likely to be hard and woody. If you collect your plants along the sea shore, or in a very dry or sandy region, you will have some with very thick, fleshy leaves or stems. Find out what you can about the taste of your plants. Are any of them poisonous ? Do animals eat them ? You are sure to notice the odors. You could learn to know many California autumn plants by the sense of smell alone. Now we want to think out the uses of these qualities. What dangers do they help the plant to meet ? At this time of the year, when plants are so scarce, they are in special danger of being eaten by insects and grazing animals. So it is easy to see the use of poisonous or harm- ful qualities, of bitter taste or disagreeable milky juice. The strong odors, of course, give warning of unpleasant taste. Sticky and hairy leaves are not pleasant to the tongue, and sometimes prickles are very cruel weapons indeed. At the end of this chapter are drawings of some common plant hairs tinder the microscope. Number 6 is one of the little bristles of our common cactus, or prickly pear. Do you wonder that it is so much trouble to get them out of your flesh? It is not strange that animals learn to avoid the plants. Another danger that summer brings to plants in the drier parts of the state, is the intense light, for it injures the chlorophyll unless a screen is provided. So here is another use for the thick skins and hairs that give the plants their gray color. Perhaps you know how gray our desert plants are. Another danger is dust. Plants, like animals, breathe and can be suffocated. The hairs of plants help to keep the dust from their pores, just as your lashes protect your eyes. 41 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES But the greatest danger that threatens these plants is that the roots may not be able to supply as much water as the parts above ground give off. When you shut up corn leaves in a glass jar, the moisture they gave off could be seen in a few minutes. In the open air evaporation is more rapid. Some one has figured out the amount of water given off by an acre of grass in twelve hours. It is more than one hundred tons; it would cover your schoolroom floor to the depth of three or four feet. Surely, our dry weather plants cannot afford to part with water at this rate. Find out for yourselves if the plants you have collected lose water as fast as the corn. Shut up in separate jars equal weights of corn seedlings, and of shoots like hoar- hound or tarweed with woolly leaves, twigs of live oak or Eucalyptus withjhard leaves, and a fleshy plant like a cactus or a Sedum. Do they give off different amounts of water ? Take off the covers and leave the plants exposed to dry air and the sun for a day, then weigh them again, and see which have lost the most water. Next find out how much the skin helps to keep in moisture. Peel off the skin from some leaves, Sedum leaves are good for this; put these leaves and an equal weight of entire leaves in the sun for a day or two, then weigh them again. It is very clear now that the skin of plants control the giving off of water, and that a hard or hairy skin keeps in more than a delicate one, such as the corn has. Turn back to the picture of the epidermis, or skin of a leaf, in Fig. 10. It consists, you remember, of tile-like cells fitted closely together, and of pairs of cells with openings between them, the pores, or stomata. Now the tile-like cells have their outside walls thickened, sometimes very much, as in the live oak, Eucalyptus and cactus. This thickened layer contains a substance somewhat like tallow, through which it is very difficult for water to pass. So most of the water leaves a plant through the pores. But these little mouth- 42 AUTUMN PLANTS like pores can open and close ; when the air is very dry they close and so help the plant, for it is of course when the air is hot and dry that the plants are in greatest danger. Still all these devices do not entirely prevent evaporation. It would be bad for the plants if they did; for if the current of water from roots to leaves were to stop, there would be no raw material brought from the soil to the leaves, and food-making would soon come to an end. So even hard leaves, like the live oak and Eucalyptus give off so much water that in our experiments we can see and weigh it. We use only a few leaves in our experiments; think how much water a great oak or a tall Eucalyptus must give off from all its leaves on a hot summer day ! The live oak, even in Southern California, will grow a long distance from streams, but it has many roots, some of which go far and deep in their search for moist soil. So the oak does not rest entirely during the summer, but keeps busy enough to ripen its acorns. The Eucalyptus lives much faster. It sends out new leaves all summer long, even when it grows in places too dry for the live oak to live at all. Its home is Australia, and it seems to have learned there how to defy drought. You know what greedy roots it has ; how they drink in all the moisture from the ground so that other plants that try to live near it starve. You have noticed how little shade the leaves cast at noon. This is because they have their edges toward the sky, and the sun cannot strike their surfaces during the hottest part of the day, and so draw out more moisture than they can spare. Earlier and later in the day the sun shines directly on the blades, and helps them to make their food rapidly. Other trees that have been brought from foreign countries to California, because they know how to stand dry weather, have this same habit of vertical leaves. Find out some of them yourselves. Our own Manzanita, too, has this habit. 43 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES Iii your experiments you found that the cactus and the Sedum lost less water than any of your other plants. It is easy to see why. If you were to take two equal lumps of clay, and roll one up into a ball and make the other into thin leaves, you know which would dry out first. Indeed the cactus know so well how to store water that it can live through the summer in deserts where all other plants perish entirely or die back to the ground. Other plants beside the cactus adopt the plan of presenting little surface for evaporation during the dry season. Your collection is sure to include plants with few leaves or with small leaves. The wild broom, Fig. u, has both small and scattered leaves, but the stems are green, too, and help in the food-making, so that in unexposed places this plant can go on flowering all the year round. The plant in Fig. 12 is one kind of Eriogonum. There are nearly two hundred kinds, and they abound in the drier parts of Western America, often where few other plants can exist. The Eriogonutns have usually small, woolly leaves. Often the leaves grow close to the ground and die early in the dry season ; after this the plant does not grow much, but it can develop flowers and fruit by means of food already stored, helped out by what the green cells in the woolly stems manufacture. The plant pictured in Fig. 13 belongs to the same family as the tarweeds, sage brushes, everlasting flowers, sun flowers and many others that you have probably collected. This family is called Compositse ; and it is the very largest and perhaps the most clever of all plant families. We shall study the flowers in the spring, but you will be interested then to remember how many of the family know how to meet hard times. Their devices are many, as you have seen, but the most common one, perhaps, is a hairy covering. A thick coating of hairs is probably the best protection of all for plants that are really active during the summer. 44 AUTUMN PLANTS Fig. 11. WILD BROOM Lotus glaber. Fig. 12. Eriogonum elongatum. 45 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES rf v The everlasting plants, the hoarhound, and the sage brushes are good examples of this. The hairs are empty, or rather they contain simply air, so they keep in moisture just as a layer of straw keeps soil moist, or as a stopper of cotton in a bottle keeps water from evaporating. Besides, the in- terlacing hairs actually keep the leaf cells cooler by shad- ing them from the sun. At the end of this chapter are some of these screening plant hairs as they look under the microscope. One of the most hairy of California autumn plants is the one in Fig. 14 ; children sometimes call it turkey- weed. In some parts of the state it covers acres of hard, sun-baked soil, but it is so nearly the color of the dusty earth that it is easily over- looked. It is sticky, prickly and ill- seen ted, and you may think it a very ugly little weed. Indeed, with so many dangers to combat, plants cannot always afford to be pretty, they must be content with being clever. But really this turkey-weed is not with- out beauty. No. 4 at the end of the chapter is a drawing of the hairs under the micro- scope. You see that they are little stars, each having Fig. 13. A SUMMER COMPOSITE- iMalacotbrix tenuifolia. 46 AUTUMN PLANTS one long point that serves as a dagger. Do you not see what an elegant screen these interlacing stars form against intense light, heat and dust? But these same hairs have still another mission. Have you ever pi eked the plants on a dewy or foggy morning and noticed how heavy they are? You can find by experiment that the leaves take Fig. 14. TURKEY-WEED - setigera. in their own weight in water in a few hours, and under the microscope you can see the water enter the hairs. Probably this is why the plant can go on blossoming and ripening seed after it seems impossible for the roots to get moisture from the soil. No. 2, Fig. 15, is another disagreeable weed very common in Southern California, but its flowers are pretty and very interesting indeed. They keep honey for the bees only, but they know how to make the bees pay for it by rubbing pollen against their stigmas. No. i is the wild 47 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES fuchsia, common on many California hillsides ; and a very beautiful plant it is ! It is not strange that the humming birds like to visit its brilliant scarlet flowers. If you watch, you can see how the birds carry pollen for the flowers. Perhaps, as you were collecting your plants, you noticed that the poison oak leaves were turning red, or that the sycamore leaves were beginning to look dull and dry. Really these plants were getting ready to take a rest, perhaps because the summer had been so hard for them. In cold and in dry climates there are many trees and shrubs that do not try to meet hard times, but drop all their leaves and re- main idle until better times; they are called deciduous. In very dry countries, the leaves fall when the dry air takes too much moisture from them; in cold countries, when the soil gets too cold to supply water. It is not easy to explain why our trees and shrubs drop their leaves just when they do. Most plants have definite times for doing certain things, and sometimes it is impossible to explain why ; then we give the fact a long name, we call it periodicity. Perhaps it seems to you a great waste for the trees to lose their thousands of leaves every year ; but the waste is not so great as it seems. Before the leaves fall, the most valuable materials emigrate to the stem, to be used later by the new leaves. The chlorophyll is broken up and carried away, and, in the many changes that take place, sometimes very brilliant colors are produced. Perhaps you know something about the gorgeous autumn colors of forests in our Eastern States. Old leaves always contain much min- eral matter that has been left over from food-making. Have you not noticed the amount of ashes remaining after leaves have been burned ? This waste matter is given back to the earth as the leaves decay, and can be used again. The decaying leaves enrich the soil in other ways, and also help to keep it moist. Be sure, during the rest of the year, to watch the 48 Fig. 15. PLANTS OF THE DRY SEASON. 1. Wild fuchsia, Zauscbneria Californica. 2. Blue curls, Tricbostema lanceolatum. 4 49 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES plants you have been studying. You will find some of them working on more busily than ever after the rains come. Others will take their vacation just when material for food-making comes most easily; but you must remem- ber that in plant life, as in business life, there is what is called competition. The stronger crowd out the weaker, and there is not room for all at the same time. So the plants that know how to meet hard times wait until there is less competition, and brave other dangers instead; and, as we have seen, they make a success of life and are some- times beautiful besides. F : g. 16. PLANT HAIRS UNDER THE MICROSCOPE. 1. Croton. 2. Mentzelia. .3. Gnaphalium. 4. Kremocarpus. 5. Trichostema. 6. Cactus. 50 FUNGI CHAPTER IV. SOME PLANTS THAT DO NOT MAKE THEIR OWN LIVING. The world is full of vagabond plants, and the smallest ones make the most trouble. Many of these plants belong to the group bacteria; they are also commonly called microbes or germs. They are very small indeed, so minute that it takes skillful hands and the best of microscopes to find out about them. But they are everywhere, in the air, in the soil, in water and in the tissues of plants and ani- mals. Like all other plants considered in this chapter, bacteria have no chlorophyll, and so they must live on other plants and animals, living or dead. When these little plants have warmth and moisture and just the right sort of food, they grow and multiply at a most astonishing rate; many millions of plants can arise from one, in a single day. When they cannot get food, they simply rest and wait. Some kinds can remain dormant for years, and they are so minute that they can be scattered far and wide in this condition. In order to get their food, bacteria must break up or- ganic substances and cause many changes. Some that live in the blood of animals cause serious diseases. Often a knowledge of the habits of these tiny plants helps us to get rid of them. It is known, for instance, that a few hours of sunlight and dry air will kill the bacteria that cause con- sumption, and that boiling temperature kills many danger- 51 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES ous germs. In general, a study of these plants has proved that cleanliness and care can prevent many diseases. But even bacteria are not all bad. When plants and animals die, it is the bacteria that cause their decay; that is, this multitude of invisible plants, in getting their own food from dead organic matter, break it up. In taking what they need for their own growth, they set free valuable substances that would otherwise remain locked up. Car- bonic acid gas is returned to the air, and the nitrogen that formed part of the dead plants and animals, is prepared by the bacteria so that it can be used by living plants. So finally all the dead matter is used up and disappears, leaving room in the world for new generations of plants and animals. There are other invisible plants, almost as small as the bacteria, that make our bread light and edible. When we stir tiny yeast plants into flour and water and keep them warm, they become active at once, and eagerly help them- selves to the food that the wheat made for its own seed- lings. Bread is raised by the bubbles of gas that the yeast plants set free, as they take what they want for themselves. It should be baked in time to kill the little plants before they rob it of so much food that it is sour. In like manner minute plants cause what we call alcoholic fermentation in beer and in wine and fruit juice generally. When fruit is canned it is heated in order to kill all such mischief-makers. But there are also vagabond plants that we can see without the microscope. Keep some bread moist and warm for a few days and watch it closely. You will see first a mass of fuzzy, white hairs; soon you will be able to make out clusters of tiny white stalks with balls on the ends; finally you will see the balls turn black and the whole mass darken. Your bread will then be covered with a ripened crop of plants called black mould. One of the clusters under the microscope looks like No. i, Fig. 17. You see there are root-like cells for sucking in the ready-made 52 FUNGI Fig. 17. MOULD. 1. Single plant, x 40. 2, same, natural size. 3. Spore-case. 4. Resting spore. 3 and 4Jiighly magnified. food. You probably guess that the minute bodies escaping from the balls correspond to seeds and are able to grow into new plants; they are called spores. Think how many spores every little plant produces! Since there are so many mould spores in the air, do you wonder that when- ever we leave their food standing long enough in a warm, moist place, we are sure to find a crop of mould ? There are many other plants that, like the mould, con- sist mainly of slender, white hairs, but the hairs are often densely interwoven. Fungi is the name given to this group of plants. When fungi get their food from living plants and animals, these delicate hairs, or cells, that absorb the food are often within the tissues of their host, but the spores are likely to be produced outside. Smut on corn, rust on wheat or rose leaves or malva, and the white powder often seen surrounding dead house-flies, are all spores of such fungi. There are fungi that sometimes attack potatoes, grape vines, fruit trees, silk worms, etc., and work great 53 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES ruin. There are men who spend their lives studying these fungi under the microscope. Often they are able to find out how to destroy them, and then millions of dollars are saved. Lichens do not deserve to be classed with vagabond plants, as we shall see. You will usually have to look in moist places for lichens. It is said that Indians find their way through forests by means of the denser growth of lichens and mosses on the north sides of trees. Lichen No. i, Fig. 1 8, grows in long gray festoons from trees along our coasts, and a very ancient, weird appearance it gives them. No. 2 is a dainty -little lichen that clothes shaded banks of crumbling rock; in fact, the lichens are constantly crumbling this gravel into finer soil, because the white threads that fasten them to the rocks can actually dissolve the rock and pry fragments apart. No. 4 is very abundant on weather-beaten pines in the mountains; the color of the lichen is a soft, greenish yellow and its cups are a rich brown. No. 3 is one of the many lichens that form crusts on rocks or old wood. No. 5 is a dead twig on which several lichen colonies have found a home. It is not rare for dead trees, great rocks, old fences, walls, buildings, etc., to become really beautiful because of a covering of lichens with their graceful outlines and beautiful tints. The coloring matter of some lichens is used for dyes. Lichens grow the world over. They have been found on the highest mountain tops ever reached by man ; they grow in hot countries on rocks that are so heated in the dry season that you could not bear your hands on them; they also thrive in arctic regions. The so-called reindeer moss is really a kind of lichen, and this lichen makes life possible, not only to the reindeer, but also to the people that depend on the reindeer for their living. Make a collection of lichens, and find out all you can about them . As you pull them off from whatever they are 54 Fig. 18. LICHENS. CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES growing on, you will notice that you must break tough, white fibres that have held them fast. Perhaps, by tearing and picking apart your lichen, you can find out that much of it consists of this same tough, white, felt-like mass of fuzzy hairs; that is, the greater part of a lichen is fungus. Probably you can find near the surface some traces of bright green color. You will find little cups or saucers on most of your lichens. You can see, too, how quickly dry lichens absorb nearly their own weight of water. Now the microscope tells a wonderful story about lichens. It shows clearly that the greater part of the lichen is fungus, but among the interlacing threads of the fungus are multitudes of tiny, green cells, called algae. Each green cell is a plant that can live quite by itself. So we see that a lichen is not a single plant, but it consists of a big fungus that cannot make its own living and a host of minute algae that can make food very fast indeed when there is plenty of water; and the big, helpless fungus is actually supported by these tiny mites, the algae. But the algae can well afford to make food for the fungus, as well as for themselves, for the fungus shelters them and provides them with the moisture and the dissolved minerals and gases that they need. The algae really thrive better imprisoned by the fungus than when they are free and have only themselves to support. So both fungus and algae have plenty of food when there is moisture to be had, and they can get moisture from the air when we cannot see it at all. When the air is dry, they rest; and they can rest for months, and then spring quickly into active life again if there is rain or fog or dew. I4ke other fungi, the lichen fungus produces many spores. They grow in tiny sacs just below the surface of the little cups you saw. When these spores find a resting place in a favorable spot and among suitable algae servants, they grow into new lichens. You will often find lichens 56 FUNGI covered with gray powder. This consists simply of lichen fragments, which also can grow into new plants. Another group of attractive and often useful fungi in- cludes toad-stools, puff-balls, earth-stars, shelf fungi, and others. Most of these grow in decaying plant or animal matter. When the plants grow in decaying leaves, the part that takes in the food is easily seen. Sometimes it looks like mould, but usually it is more compact. This part of toad-stools is sometimes surprisingly small, but the slender, delicate cells can take in food and make new cells at a most marvelous rate. Have you not seen great masses of toad-stools come up within a few hours after a rain? And the more you examine the toad-stools, the more you will wonder that they can grow so quickly. The hundreds of folds or gills that hang under the umbrella-like part are like velvet. Under the microscope, we can see that they are densely covered with short hairs, or stalks and every stalk bears four spores on the end. lyeave the umbrella, gills downward, on a piece of paper, and soon you will see the spores that have fallen like powder on the paper. Toad- stools have clever ways for scattering their spores. Many, as they ripen, dissolve and spread over the ground like thick, black ink, so carrying their spores some distance. Many toad-stools invite flies and beetles to lay their eggs in them, promising good food for the little larvae as they hatch out worms or maggots perhaps you have called them. The larvae eat greedily and grow very fast, and soon the whole toad-stool is a wriggling, squirming mass; so the larvae are covered with spores, and when they bur- row into the earth to change into flies and beetles, they carry these spores with them. The toad-stools, which are good food for baby flies and beetles, are often good for us. They are really about as valuable food as meat, and in countries where the people know and appreciate them, the fields and woods are eagerly 57 Fig. 19. SOME COMMON FUNGI. 1, 2, 3, 4. Toad-stools. 5. Earth-star. 6. Pore fungus, Polyporu FUNGI searched for them. Perhaps you have thought that there is only one kind good to eat, the kind usually called the mushroom, No. i in the picture. Really there are many edible kinds. In our Eastern States over one hundred kinds are known to be good for food. A botanist in South- ern California found twenty- seven edible kinds in one sea- son, and only two that were poisonous. There are a few kinds that contain a deadly poison. Many others are harmless but are not pleasant to the taste. There is no sure rule that distinguishes all poisonous toad-stools from those that are edible, but people can learn to know them just as they learn to know flowers or birds. Puff- balls keep their spores inside the balls; pinch a dry one and you will see the spores come out in little clouds. If you have sharp eyes you may find earth-stars among de- caying oak leaves. As you can see from the picture, they are similar to puff-balls, but have an extra coat that splits and opens out like a star when the ground is moist; as the earth-star dries, the coat closes up around the spore-case again. One kind of puff-ball grows very large, a foot or even a yard through, it is said. This giant puff-ball is very good to eat. Think how many slices of puff-ball steak can be cut from one of them! The shelf fungus, or pore fungus, No. 6, usually grows on trees, living or dead. The spores line the tiny tubes on the under side of the shelf. The part that takes in food threads through and through the wood, and causes it to crumble and decay rapidly. There are also plants with flowers and seeds that can- not make their own living; the dodder, or gold thread, for instance, which twines so closely around other plants, and sucks out their juices. On the ground in our mountain forests are numbers of flowering plants with never a trace of green color about them. Perhaps you have seen our beautiful crimson snow plant with flowers that humming birds love. In dense tropical forests, plants of this sort are 59 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES very common, for, since they do not need the sun to help make their food, they can live in dark, gloomy places. The very largest flower known grows on such a plant in the forests of Sumatra. The flower is more than three feet across, and its seeds are scattered by elephants. 60 WINTER PLANTS CHAPTER V. AFTER THE RAINS. How and when did they come up, these wayside seed- lings? Did you watch? Did you catch the pale little arches lifting the soil ? Or had the little pairs of leaves got out before you knew the seeds were awake ? You were alert if you saw it all, for the seedlings come very quickly at the call of the first rain. Of course you were not sur- prised to see that the first two leaves were unlike the next ones, for you would remember the seed leaves of the plants you grew in the house. Did you find out that the pairs of leaves that look like little, green, Indian arrow-heads belong to that common weed, the malva? The filaree is easy to make out; the grass comes up like the corn and leaves its cotyledon in the ground; the bur-clover seeds stay in the bur and sprout there. And this is a very good plan the bur-clover has. Germinate some bur-clover seeds on top of moist earth, and you will see what trouble they have getting into the soil. The root-tip wants to go down, as root- tips always do, but the seed is very light and it is not held down by the earth above it, so the growing root has nothing to push against, and simply slips along the surface until its root-hairs anchor it so that it can bore its way into the soil. But the burs that hold the clover seeds are more or less covered with dust; when it rains they stick in the wet soil, and their little teeth anchor the seeds so firmly that 61 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES Fig. 20. EARLY SEEDLINGS. 1. Fox-tail grass. . 2. Malva. 3. Filaree. 4. Bur-clover. the root can grow down at once. And the seeds are better off in the bur than they would be in the ground, because they are protected and, at the same time, are likely to be carried away in the bur to some place where they will have more room to grow. Perhaps, after the first rain, there were weeks of hot, dry weather, and the little seedlings that came up first died of thirst; but nature seems always to have a reserve supply, buried deeper, perhaps, and sooner or later the hills and fields have their carpet of green. Now the seedlings that form this carpet have but a few months to live, and their lives, which seem so short to us, must be very busy ones indeed. There is usually plenty of water at this time of year, and the sun is no longer to be feared, but has become a genial friend. And how the little plants reach out to him! Notice the malva leaves in the morning, and again at noon and towards evening. All day long the leaves turn on their stems so as to directly face the sun, for the sun's rays furnish the power for the food-making that is going on in the millions of laboratory cells packed so closely just beneath the upper surface of the leaf. The bur-clover, too, holds up its leaves to the sun. One kind of filaree, when it has room, spreads out flat in pretty leaf rosettes, 62 WINTER PLANTS Fig. 21. SEEDLINGS SPREAD OUT TO THE SUN. 1. Lupine. 2. Filaree. CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES as in Fig. 21, but when many plants grow close together, the leaves rise and stretch up to the sun. Count the leaves on such a plant and see how many are not shaded. Even if one leaf must stand between another and the sun, it is so slashed and divided that it lets much light through. The lupine seedling in the picture spreads out like a fan with leaves facing the sun; it looks almost as if it had been pressed for a herbarium. This lupine has a coat of silky hairs that later on will preserve it from loss of moisture, but now it protects it from the cold of the nights. The bur-clover leaves know a good way to keep warm at night; they fold their leaflets and cuddle them close together so that they lose less heat. You can see this easily for your- selves, for the clover leaves go to sleep early. Try to find other leaves that take "sleeping positions." But our green carpet does not consist entirely of seed- lings. Soon after the first heavy rains, plants like those in Fig. 22 appear and soon overtop the others. By digging, you can find out why they grow so much faster than the seed- lings. No. 4, Fig. 22, is the soap-root, cut in two to show what the bulb is like inside. The soap-root is very com- mon in California, and it is well named, for it does very nicely for soap. Examine a plant carefully and you will find that the white layers are the bases of the leaves, and that the layers of brown husk are the remains of leaves of other years. The white substance is, of course, mainly food, and the soapy quality protects it against hungry little gophers and the like; the husk of strong interlacing strands is a protection too. Compare the amount of food in this bulb with what is stored in little seeds like the bur-clover or malva, and you will understand why the soap-root can grow so fast. As long as there is plenty of moisture, its pretty ruffled leaves go on making more food and storing it in their bases; but do you think these leaves can go on working when the dry season comes? They are like the 61 Fig. 22. EVRI,Y GROWTH FROM UNDERGROUND STOREHOUSES. 1. An Umbellifer. 2. Blue-eyed grass. 3. Cluster lily. 4. Soap-root. 5 65 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES corn leaves, and give off moisture rapidly, and when the soil gets dry they are sure to perish. It is not until after they are dead, that the food they have stored will be used. In June, perhaps, a tall flower stalk, sometimes six or eight feet high, will shoot up from the bulb, and slender, white lilies will open late in the afternoon, but we will wait till June to see the rest. No. 3 is one of the earliest plants to bloom. It is the cluster lily, cocometa, the Spanish call it. We shall find out more about it in Chapter VII, but now is the time to see what the first leaf does; it has pierced the ground by means of its sharply pointed tip and it is wrapped about the other leaves and the oeginnings of the flowers, so that it brings them, too, above ground and protects them for a time. No. 2 is a young plant of the blue-eyed grass. No. i belongs to the carrot family, and will bloom early. You will find that many other plants that were en- tirely underground during the dry season, are starting into life again now. The prettiest of them all are the ferns, but they shall have a chapter to themselves. A very striking new growth from an underground store-house is the chilicothe, or wild cucumber. The shoots come up early in the winter and in a very short time they are many feet long and are in full flower. In the val- leys of Southern California one can always find the chili- cothe in flower before Christmas, even in dry years when there is very little other new growth at that time. The root explains this, in fact the plant is often called big-root or man-root; roots two feet long and half as thick are com- mon, and they are said to be sometimes four feet long. These roots must store up a great deal of moisture as well as food, for when the regular season for new growth comes, they can supply the shoots regardless of rainfall; in fact, new shoots will come out in November from roots that have been out of the soil for months. Of course such roots Fig. 23. CHIUCOTHE Micrampelis macrocarpa. 67 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES as these are very troublesome, greedy neighbors in orchards, and they grow so deep in the soil that it is not easy to get rid of them. The roots protect themselves against animals by being very bitter. The foliage is bitter, too, but cows will eat it; perhaps you know how it makes the milk taste. The vines climb up into the light by tendrils that grasp everything within their reach, and the flowers burst out be- fore the leaves are fully grown. There are two kinds of flowers; see if you can find them. The flower that will become a big, spiny, green bur, grows by itself close to the stem; you will find the little bur below the white cor- olla; above it is a big sticky knob called the stigma. The flowers that grow in clusters have, in the center, organs that produce yellow dust called pollen. The pollen must reach the stigma in order to make the bur and its seeds grow. As these flowers do not make honey to induce in- sects to visit them and to carry pollen to the stigmas of other flowers, the pollen is probably carried mainly by the wind. You must watch the burs after they are grown, to see how the seeds get out. During the summer the softer part of the bur decays and leaves a pretty lace-like skeleton. Look now for the plants you studied in the fall. Many of them are taking their winter rest, but the hoarhound, everlasting plant, and sage brush have fine new shoots in fleecy, white dress. Some shrubby lupines are even more beautifully dressed, in shimmering silky coats. The poison oak has already its new leaves, and see how they spread out to the sun! When the poison oak is climbing against a bank or tree trunk, the leaves fit so closely together with- out overlapping that they form what are called leaf-mosaics. How does the poison oak climb? Does the chilicothe climb in the same way ? What cultivated plant does ? Many other shrubs that lost their leaves in summer or autumn, have their new leaves well grown, and some are in flower, the wild currants and gooseberries, for instance. 68 WINTER PLANTS Fig. 24. WII.D CURRANT Ribes glutinosum. 69 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES The leaves of the wild currant are rather disagreeable; they come early and have to look out for themselves, but the pink and white flowers are lovely enough. Eastern people say they resemble the trailing arbutus, their own early spring flower that they love to talk and write about, and they wonder that we do not care more for our pretty early flowers. Some early wild gooseberries have long, bright red flowers that serve honey to humming bird guests, but do not exclude the larger bees. The goose- berries are well protected by thorns, so they can afford beau- tiful glossy leaves; they arrange their leaves so that they get plenty of light and at the same time form a roof over Fig. 25. WIID GOOSEBERRY Ribes amarum. the flowers that will protect the pollen from rain. Perhaps you will find the wild lilac in flower. One kind of early lilac has leaves with the edges rolled back all around and a thick fur on the under side. In the canons you will find many other plants with rolled leaves, or leaves with fur or fuzz or bloom on the underside only, and we shall talk about the reason later on. How many of the native trees of your neighborhood arejeafless now? Notice the cultivated ones, too. Have any of them new leaves yet ? Trees are generally slower than smaller plants in getting their new leaves, and most 70 WINTER PLANTS of the deciduous trees will seem to you quite asleep this time of the year. But you can find the buds that will later unfold into leafy shoots and flowers. Where does the syca- more keep these buds ? Where are they on the other trees ? How are these buds protected on the willow ? On the cot- tonwood and the alder? On the fruit trees in your orchards ? If the coverings are not distinct now, you can see them better as the buds begin to swell. Perhaps the ' ' pussies ' ' on the willows are already bursting out. Find out for your- selves what the willow flowers are like and where they keep their honey. The bees know, and you can watch them, they will not mind you in the least. What else do they get be- sides honey? Farther on we shall have a lesson on the awakening of the trees, but they do not all awaken at once, and unless you keep your eyes open all along, you will miss many of their clever ways. 71 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES CHAPTER VI. FERNS AND THEIR RELATIVES. How they love moisture, the ferns and their kindred! You noticed how quickly they responded to the invitation of the rain. The rock fern or Polypodium came above ground so quickly that it was hard to catch the leaves un- rolling; and that is a pity, because they are such neat little balls when they first break through the soil. It is easy to see why the Polypodium can grow so fast, for the under- ground stem is an ample storehouse, and there is a tangle of long slender roots to gather moisture. With the first rains, moisture is absorbed to dissolve the stored food and make it read} 7 for the use of the baby leaves that are snugly curled up like little knobs along the underground stems. Soon the leaves are above ground, uncoiling, and spreading out millions of green cells to the light. Hold up a leaf and look through it for woody strands. You can trace these strands running up the slender roots, through the under- ground stem, up through the leaf stem, branching through every leaflet and sending off slender fibres that reach to the very tips of the teeth along the leaf margin. As in the seedlings, these woody strands serve to carry the raw ma- terial taken in by the root-hairs, up to the green cells in the leaves, there to be manufactured into useful food. This fern works rapidly while there is plenty of moist- ure, and early in the winter you will find, on the under side of some leaves, what look like tiny seeds in neat round clusters. But did you ever know seeds to come without 72 Fig. 26. Polypodium Californicum. CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES flowers first ? Besides, if you try to make those ' ' fern seeds" grow, you will see nothing that looks like a fern for a long time. These facts used to puzzle the people of olden times, and have led to some curious beliefs. For instance, fern seeds were supposed to be formed in some mysterious way on midsummer nights. To find them one must go alone at midnight and must repeat certain magic words. For hundreds of years no one seems to have taken the trouble to find out certainly whether the brown specks really were fern seeds. It was not until about fifty years ago that the truth about them was found out. Under the microscope they look like Nos. i, 2 and 3 in the drawing at the end of the chapter. That is, each tiny speck is not a seed, nor even a spore, but a transparent case, somewhat like a watchcase, and it is filled with spores. So the round spots on the underside of the Polypodium are clusters of spore-cases. Kach case has around it a ring of strong elas- tic tissue that has one weak place. When the ring breaks it acts like a spring and straightens itself, tearing open the case and flinging out the spores . Millions of spores simply perish, but here and there one will find a suitable place for growing. You will need sharp eyes to find the first growth from the spores, and you need look only in very shady, damp places. lyittle colonies are sometimes found beneath projecting clods of earth, or on steep north banks shaded by vines and brambles. The strangest part of the story is that the first growth from the fern spore does not in the least resemble a fern. It is a thin, delicate, green scale, not so large as your finger-nail; it lies flat on the ground and is fastened to it by delicate root-hairs. It is pictured in No. 4, Fig. 30, at the end of the chapter. Perhaps you will find a plant a little more advanced, like No. 5. The green scale has sent down a little root, and a slender stem is growing up bearing a minute ball that will unfold into a tiny leaf. Soon another leaf grows up, but by this time the first green 74 FERNS AND THEIR RELATIVES scale is brown and shrivelled, because the little upright leaves have gone to work and can do without it. In a month or so the little plant will begin to look quite like a young fern; there will be a minute underground stem, a number of branching roots, and new leaves that look more and more like grown up fern leaves. But it will be several years before the plant will be fully grown and bears spores; then it may last for many years, that is, the leaves each spring will make more food than they need for themselves and their spores, and will send it down to the underground stem for the benefit of the next season 's leaves. Examine the underground stem of the larger ferns you have collected, and see if you do not find traces of the leaves of other years. The little fern growing from the spore in Fig. 30, is a golden-back fern, and one a year or two older is pictured in Fig. 27, No. 3. Everybody in California knows and loves this fern. The golden dust on the under side of the leaf, is so abundant that it leaves a beautiful golden imprint if you press a leaf against a dark dress. This powder is really a sort of wax, similar to the bloom on some leaves and fruits. Perhaps you can guess one of its uses. You know how quickly ferns wither when you pick them. This is because the leaf cells have thin walls that give off moisture readily. If these cells had thick walls the water current that carries raw material to the leaves would move too slowly, for ferns grow in shaded places and, in California, do much of their food-making during the winter. But the wax-like coating on the underside of the leaves protects the layer of cells against evaporation; so when hot, dry days come, you will see golden-back leaves curl up, leaving only the under surface exposed; if the dry weather does not last too long, the leaves will revive with moisture, but unless these ferns grow in very sheltered places, they die down to the ground before the dry season is over. 75 Fig. 27. SOME; KARI^Y FRONDS. 1. Maiden hair. 2. Coffee fern. 3. Golden-back. 76 FERNS AND THEIR RELATIVES But the golden dust serves another purpose. The golden-back, like other ferns, has its pores, or openings, through the leaf-skin, on the underside only. These pores close when the plant is in danger of losing too much water, but much of the time they need to be open to allow the water current to pass out and to assist in breathing, so these pores must not be choked up in any way. Now if you have looked, you know that dew collects on the under side of leaves as well as on the upper, and it remains here longer because the sun cannot reach it. In the sorts of places ferns frequent, leaves are sometimes not wholly dry for months; so you see they need some device to keep their pores from being stopped up by water. The wax- like powder of the golden-back fern, acts like oil on the feathers of water-birds; it prevents the leaves from being wet; the water simply collects in little drops that roll off, and the water current and breathing are not hindered. As golden back ferns grow older, a brown powder, too, appears on the lower side of the leaves, first in deli- cate lines, later on perhaps covering the entire surface. The microscope shows that every grain of this brown pow- der is a case full of spores. Some California children know where to find the silver-back ferns. Often young golden- backs are mistaken for silver-backs, but the real silver-back fern is usually larger and hardier than its cousin with the gold dust. The upper surface of the leaf is thick skinned and rather sticky, and the lower side is covered with a silvery powder. Have you ever thought what gives the maiden-hair fern, No. i, Fig. 27, its name? Look at its stems. The Greek botanical name, Adiantum, means not wet. Find out if this is a fitting name for the fern. The silvery appear- ance of the leaves under water is due to a layer of air between the leaf and the water. So the maiden-hair fern, as well as the golden-back, knows how to escape being choked 77 Fig. 28. FRAGMENTS OF SPORE BEARING FERN FRONDS. 1. Tip of Woodwardia. 2. Pinnule of shield fern. 3 Lace fern. 4. Bird's-foot fern. 5. Tip of sword fern. FERNS AND THEIR RELATIVES by water; and it needs this protection, for it is often found growing in places that are dripping with moisture for weeks at a time. The leaves of the maiden-hair are very thin, that is, the green cells are spread out so as to be well ex- posed to what light they can get in the shaded canons where they are found. You are likely to find the largest leaves in the dimmest canons. Can you think why it is better for a thin, delicate leaf like the maiden-hair to have its area broken up into little leaflets, than to form an entire leaf? Of course these fine divisions of the ferns make them very attractive to us, but they must be of some use to the ferns themselves. Remem- ber that even in sheltered canons, heavy rains beat on plants, and winds might tear them. You know what hap- pens to big banana leaves in such storms. It would be very harmful, too, for fern leaves to shade one another. If your maiden-hair leaves are old enough, you can see where they keep their spore-cases. The little fragment in the picture shows this. The coffee fern, No. 2, Fig. 27, turns back its leaf mar- gins like a neat little hem to protect its spore-cases, and so does the bird-foot fern, No. 4, Fig. 28. You can think for yourselves what gives these ferns their names. They are the most hardy of .all our common ferns. The bird-foot fern grows in rocky places that are fully exposed to the sun, yet the leaves usually survive the long dry season. In the winter you will find, growing from the same thick, fuzzy underground stem, tender new leaves that the rains have called out, and the stiff, woody leaves of the past year. The coffee fern seems to prefer more shaded places, but it is usually able to keep its leaves during the dry season. Both of these -ferns, in Southern California at least, make their most rapid growth during the winter months, when their food-making might be hindered by too much moisture. But the rolled back leaflets prevent the water from clogging 79 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES up the pores on the underside. So these rolled back leaf margins serve at least three purposes ; they protect the spores, lessen the evaporation from the leaves during the dry season, and prevent the pores from being choked up during the rainy season. In the drier parts of Southern California, and in moun- tains in different parts of the state, there are found several kinds of exquisite little ferns with leaves very finely divided. They have various names, such as lace fern, lip fern, woolly-back fern, and scaly fern ; No. 3, Fig. 28, is one leaf of a lace fern. Generally these ferns have a thick skin or a waxen coat, or else they are densely covered on the under-side with tiny, overlapping, woolly or papery scales, and besides this, some of them have the habit of curling up quite snugly when the weather is too cold or too hot, and uncurling again when better times come. I/arge, coarse ferns that grow in masses, are often called bracken. There is one kind that is common in California as well as in many other parts of the world. In Southern California you will find it only in the mountains among the pines, or in canons ; but in the regions of greater moisture, it often forms thickets from four to six feet high, and acres in extent. This fern seems to rejoice in heat as well as in moisture ; it attains its full growth in midsummer and dies down with the frost. In some countries the leaves of this fern are used for thatching roofs, and it is said that young leaves and underground stems are sometimes cooked and eaten. Perhaps the most beautiful of all our California ferns, is the Woodwardia, which grows in graceful clumps along mountain streams. The great feathery leaves, sometimes six or seven feet long, have a tropical look, but they are really very hardy. In Southern California they survive summer drought and winter frost, and cut leaves can be kept in the house, fresh and beautiful, for weeks. No. i, 80 FERNS AND THEIR RELATIVES Fig. 28, is a fragment of one of the leaves. No. 2, in the same cut, is a small fragment of another of the larger ferns. It is called- a shield fern because the coverings for the groups of spore-cases look like tiny shields. No. 5 is the tip of the leaf of another kind of shield fern. This fern has beautiful, dark green, glossy leaves that are so slender and stiff that the plant is sometimes called sword fern. If you have searched in moist places for the first stages of ferns, you have probably found groups of other little, flat, green bodies fastened to the soil by root-hairs, but thicker than the first fern plants. As the season advances, some of these tiny plants send up, not little fern leaves, but tiny stalks that resemble toadstools or umbrellas, like No. 9, Fig. 30. Beneath each green umbrella are several little sacs of spores, which are very interesting under the micro- scope. These plants are called liverworts, and although they are so tiny, they know very well how to take care of themselves. I/ike the ferns, they must have much moisture in order to thrive. When dry days come they curl up so tightly that they seem merely dark lines on the soil ; but, wet the soil , and in an hour or so the little liverworts are all uncurled, and are quite fresh and ready for work again. There is another kind of liverwort, No. 10, very common in green-houses. It crowds in everywhere, sometimes even covering the sides of flower-pots, and it is not strange that it spreads so fast, for each full grown plant has a little pocket or two full of green particles, every one of which can grow into a new plant. The true mosses, which form a beautiful, bright green covering for damp soil and rocks, or even for walls and shaded roofs, are cousins of the liverworts. Many of the California mosses are very small, but you can readily see that each tiny plant has root, stem and leaves, and you will often find the pretty little urns in which they keep their spores. Perhaps you know some moist shaded place where 6 81 Fig. 29. SCOURING RUSH, OR HORSETAIL. Equisetum. 1. Sterile shoot. 2. Spore-bearing shoot. 3. Spore-bearing branch, x 5. 4. Moist spore, x 150. 5, Dry spore,"x 150. FERNS AND THEIR RELATIVES the mosses grow large and feathery or fern-like. In countries where the weather is always cool and moist, the mosses are perhaps the loveliest of all their plants. Should you guess that the plant in Fig. 29, the scouring rush or horse-tail, is also a relative of the ferns? It is even more particular than the fern about being in a very moist place. Very early in the spring you may find branches like No. 2, coming up from a sturdy underground stem. Later on, stalks like No. i develop, and grow to be several feet high before the summer is over. They are harsh and brittle and can be used for scouring. Think out the use of this hard substance to the plants themselves. The stalks that come up first end in pretty cones several inches long. You have only to handle these cones to see that they are covered with tiny branches that bear cases full of green spores. No. 3 is a single branch enlarged. If you moisten some spores and watch them, dry under the microscope, they will seem to be jumping about in a very lively way. This is because each spore has four arms that coil about it when it is moist, but spring back suddenly as the spore dries. When these spores chance to alight in. the right sort of place, they grow into little flat, green bodies, similar to liverworts or the first stage of the fern ; but the growth from the spore is very slow, so it is best for*the old plants to live on ; and they do live, probably for centuries ; that is, the same underground stems go on sending up spore-bear- ing and food-making stems year after year. In the course of time the interlacing and matted underground parts form thick peat bogs, and in some countries this peat is used for fuel. Ferns and their relatives grow in greater variety, and attain much greater size, in countries that are hot and moist all the year round. On the Island of Jamaica there are places where one can find fifty kinds of ferns in as many yards. Some of these tropical ferns climb up tree trunks, 83 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES others become themselves small trees. Geologists tell us that ages and ages ago the earth must have been very densely covered with ferns and kindred plants, much larger than those we know to-day. Our principal coal fields have been formed by these plants, so we may sit by our firesides and enjoy the sunbeams imprisoned by ferns and their relatives countless years ago. Fig. 30. 1, 2, 3. Spore-cases of ferns, x 75. 4, 5, 6. 7. Early stages of maiden-hair ferns. 8. Fern prothallium, magnified and diagramatic. 9, 10. liverworts. SOME EARL Y FLO WERS CHAPTER VII. SOME EARLY FLOWERS. Of our many early wild flowers, which shall we choose ? A large flower that is easy to understand, is best to begin with, so we will take the peony. It is one of the earliest, too ; in some parts of California its large red flowers open before Christmas time. It has an underground stem and long, thick roots that have stored the food to give it such an early start. The peony has many large leaves, which stretch out to the sun, let the light through their pretty slashes, roll the moisture off their smooth surfaces, and behave generally like leaves that must be in haste to finish their work before the rainy season is over. They are soon able to replace the food they have used from the storehouse, but they have other work to do. There must be new peony plants ; that is, there are seeds to be made, and this is the reason for the flowers. In the centre of the peony are the three cases that will some day hold the seeds. These cases are called pistils. The beginnings of the seeds are already there, little white bodies, called ovules. The name is made from a Latin word that means egg, for each ovule contains what is called an egg cell. The little plant that a seed always con- tains has not yet begun to form. The part of the pistil that encloses the ovules is called the ovary. Above the ovary, at the very top of the pistil, is a pair of thin lips that have their inner surface sticky. This sticky surface is called the 85 Fir. 81. PROXY 'Pceonia Californica. 1 Pistil. 2 Stamen. 3. Modified stamen. 4. Petal. 5 and 6. Sepals. SOME EARLY FLOWERS stigma. Surrounding the pistils of the peony are many bodies like No. 2, Fig. 31. Each one is called a stamen, the stem part of it is called the filament, and the upper part the anther; through two openings of the anther escapes a yellow dust, which is called pollen ; and very precious dust it is, for it is only when some of it reaches the stigma and there grows down till it unites with an egg cell of an ovule, that the little plant can begin to grow ; that is, ovules can not become seeds without the help of pollen. Now pollen is easily injured, both by cold and by moisture. Let us see what protects it. Around the stamens are two circles of little leaves, the inner one red, the outer, green or purple and green. The inner circle is called the corolla and each leaf a petal, the outer circle is called the calyx and each leaf a sepal. In the bud, the calyx and corolla are closely wrapped about the stamens ; as the bud opens, they still protect the pollen, because the flower faces down- ward and the calyx and corolla are like a roof over the stamens. But why should the bud have opened at all, if it is only necessary that the pollen fall on the stigma ? Could not this happen even better in the bud ? We enjoy the open flowers with their pretty colors, but of what use to the plant is their opening ? Some great naturalists have tried to work out the answers to these questions, and this is what they seem to have proved. Nature prefers that flowers should not work alone at seed-making, for the best seeds result when flowers help each other, when each gets the pollen for seed-making from some other. In fact many flowers are so arranged that their own pollen cannot reach the stigmas. The peony keeps its stigmas quite beyond its anthers, and the pollen cannot easily fall on them. As soon as a peony bud begins to open, the stigmas, all ready for pollen, stand on guard at the entrance. What is to bring pollen to them ? If you have fresh flowers, you will find 87 Fig. 32. BUTTERCUP Ranunculus California. SOME EARL Y FLO WERS that among the stamens are yellow, cushion-like bodies, covered with honey. Now bees and other insects have found out about this honey, and if they have been to older flowers for it, they are covered with pollen. When once bees begin to visit peonies, they visit every peony in sight before calling on other flowers, and when they discover this opening bud and enter it, they must strike the stigmas and rub off some of the pollen on them ; so our peony gets pollen for seed-making from some other flower. The botanists call this, cross pollination. You can see now why such flowers should not be green ; the color helps the insect to find the flower. The odor, too, is an advertisement. The buttercup is first cousin to the peony, though you may not see any family resemblance ; we will talk of that in some other chapter. It has not such ample storehouses as the peony, but there is some food stored in its short underground stem and its little clustered roots, which sur- vive the dry season. Its leaves resemble the peony leaves, and behave in much the same way, but its flowers, instead of hanging down their heads, look straight at the sun and follow it all day long. As the flowers grow older the green sepals, which in the bud help in food-making, turn yellow, bend back, and finally fall off entirely ; they really are not needed, because there are so many bright varnished petals to glisten in the sun. If you were a bee flying toward this flower, you would see something else glistening, a tiny drop of honey at the base of every petal. Now study the flowers to see how the bees repay them for their hospitality. A buttercup has many little pistils, each of which has an ovary, containing just one ovule, and a wee, fuzzy stigma at the very top. There are also many stamens. Find a flower that has just opened for the first time. The stigmas will be ready for pollen, and the stamens will be standing back in a compact ring, not yet 89 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES shedding pollen. Next examine an older flower. The inner stamens have risen up and covered the stigmas, their pollen still unshed , but the outer stamens are shedding pollen directly away from the stigmas. Keep this flower in water and examine it from day to day. It will behave very nearly as it does out of doors, closing at night to protect the pollen. You will see that the buttercup takes nearly a week to shed its pollen, the inner anthers rising and taking the place of the outer ones when they are empty. Now dur- ing all this time a bee or any other large insect visiting the flower for honey, is sure to carry away some pollen, not because it is sure to alight in the center of the flower, and so must reach over the anthers to get the honey. You may often see a brisk little bee double himself over the ring of stamens and make a complete circuit of them as he sucks up every drop of honey. He is a very dusty bee when he leaves the flower, and if he goes next to a newly opened flower, many of its stigmas will get the grains of pollen they need for seed-making. So the buttercup, with its honest, round, shining face, is well paid for its generous hospitality. But the buttercup knows nothing about economy or exclusiveness. Its bill of fare is well advertised, and all may come ; any insect, large or small, can get its honey and the pollen that collects in its petals, and little beetles, small flies and other tiny, gauzy creatures often alight on the petals, take pollen or honey, and go away without touching anthers or stigma. There are some flowers, however, that know how to exclude such useless guests ; the cluster lily, for instance. It may trouble you to make out the calyx and corolla of the cluster lily. Really there are three sepals and three petals, but they are all united to form one purple cup. The six stamens, as you can see by laying the flower open, grow on the inner surface of the cup, three of them having* longer anthers than the other three. Back of these long anthers 90 Fig. 33. CLUSTER LIIyY Brodicea capita CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES are pairs of white, pointed "appendages," the botanists would say. These white teeth fit closely together and nearly close the flower; they, of course, protect the pollen, and the cluster lily needs neither to hang its flowers down nor to close them at night. But the appendages have other uses. Down at the very base of the cup is a little ring of honey ; these white points form a conical cover for the cup, leaving just a bit of an entrance at the top. So only insects with long slender tongues or wee insects, called thrips, can get the cluster lily's honey. The pistil of the cluster lily differs from those we have noticed before. The ovary really consists of three little rooms, or cells, as they are called. Above the ovary is a white stem called the style, and at its top are three little lines of fuzz ; these are the stigmas, and they are quite ready for pollen when the bud begins to open. So, like the peony stigmas, they guard the entrance to the honey in the bud, and are sure to be struck by the bee's or butterfly's tongue. Now, if the guest has first visited an older flower, he must have touched the anthers, because they are close to the narrow opening left by the appendages ; so every guest that comes from an older to a younger flower effects cross pollination. Examining the stamens carefully, you will see that the three long anthers open at the side, and so shed pollen for the benefit of other flowers, but that the three short anthers discharge their pollen directly on the stigmas. The cluster lily, then, seems not to trust its guests entirely, but after a little, pollinates itself. This lily is rather ungenerous as well as exclusive, for it serves only a little honey at the bot- tom of its deep, covered cups. It seems to invite large bees ; the cup is not too deep for their tongues, and blue is supposed to be their favorite color ; but the practical bees are quick to learn that there is little honey, and they rarely visit the lilies when more generous flowers are near. But- 92 SOME EARLY FLOWERS terflies are more dainty, and come more frequently ; but it is well that the flowers can pollinate themselves. The rest of the cluster lily plant, also, is interesting. You remember how the first leaf broke through the soil after the first heavy rain ; if you kept on watching the lilies, you know that the leaves grew rapidly, standing straight up to get the full sunlight ; by digging now, you can find how much food they have sent down to be stored for next year's plants ; they have made a new bulb on top of the old one, and perhaps have had food enough to send out a little colony of side bulbs. By this time, the work of the leaves is nearly over, and they are dying back, for they have no devices for meeting dry weather. But the early flowers we love best of all, are the violets and shooting stars. They, too, have underground store- houses, and this is fortunate for the children of the future, because we of to-day pick so many early wild flowers that we give them little chance to mature seeds. The violet, or yellow pansy, as it is often called, is, like the cluster lily, an exclusive flower. It keeps its honey, in a cup, or spur, at the base of the flower, and the yellow petals have many purple lines pointing the way to it honey guides, they are called. The petals are not all alike ; the lower one is broad, forming a platform for the guest to stand upon when he comes for honey. The violet, too, invites only guests with slender tongues. You can see the little green stigma close against the lower petal, just where it must be struck by a tongue in search of honey. To find out about the pollen, you must tear away the petals ; the stamens have no filaments, and the anthers are close together, forming a little box about the ovary. The tops of the anthers and the petals quite enclose this box and protect the pollen well. You may have to watch a long time out of doors to see the violet visited. Really, her honey is so difficult to 93 Fig. 34. VIOLET Viola pedunculate SOME EARLY FLOWERS get, that her guests are few. But bees sometimes come ; a bee alights on the platform petal and thrusts in his tongue ; but he seems unable to get honey in this way, so he whirls about and clings, head downward, to the upper petals while he sucks up the honey. In this process he must rattle out much pollen on his tongue. He does not usually strike the stigma as he leaves the flower; but takes the pollen to another flower, and so cross pollinates it. The shooting star has the gayest dress of all our early flowers. There are bands of crimson, purple and gold on the delicate rose or lilac petals, which shade into white. Should you not expect such an elegant flower to provide a bountiful feast ? Really, fine -lady shooting star is not in the least hospitable. She serves no honey at all, and a guest that would come for pollen has actually no place to stand, but must hang, back downward, from the gorgeous stamens. Yet she expects guests to carry pollen, for the bit of a stigma is quite beyond the anthers, and at first faces down- ward. She takes good care of her pollen. The puffy, purple filaments are grown together so that the anthers are held closely together and the pollen is kept in until some- thing disturbs the flower. Besides this, the flower hangs downward and the petals form a roof. You may watch for a long time on a hillside covered with shooting stars before you see a guest, but bees do come sometimes. Of course, they strike the stigma first, and then get a fresh supply of pollen on the under side of the body. Think whether this is cross pollination. But the shooting star finds it necessary to look out for herself later on. As the flower gets older, the anthers shrink, and, at the slightest jar, the pollen comes out in little clouds ; strike one and see. At the same time the style turns upward and the stigma at the tip is so placed that the pollen falls on it ; in this way the flower is self pollinated. The cluster lily and shooting star keep their flowers in 95 Fig. 35. SHOOTING STAR T)j.ff catio SOME EARL Y FLO WERS clusters, and this plan has many advantages. One stalk will raise them up where they can be seen by insects ; they are more conspicuous in the mass than if they were alone ; bees can visit them more quickly, and a cluster lasts much longer than a single flower ; the shooting star clusters last several weeks; the cluster lily three or four months; while a single buttercup, violet, or peony keeps its petals only a few days. As the seeds of all these wild flowers ripen, the plant must have some device to scatter them. Two of the plants shake out their seeds, two fling them, and the other has tiny hooks that help. Find out all about them for yourselves. In collecting these wild flowers you have probably already found several other sorts. In moist, shady places you would be almost sure to find the little chickweed and the miner's lettuce. This chickweed is one of several kinds that are world-wide weeds. The miner's lettuce was used for salad by the miners in early days. Some of the other early flowers will be referred to later on, others you will have to study by yourselves. In your gardens, too, are early flowers that you can easily watch and study by yourselves, the calla, for instance. What a fine storehouse it has ! We usually give it no time to rest in our gardens because we water it all the year round, but if it is kept dry in the summer, it will take a rest, and begin life again very vigorously in the winter. Be sure to notice the little side shoots from the main store- house stem. Each one can become a separate plant, and, as they break off very readily, it is not easy to rid a garden of callas after they have once become established there. Notice the leaves and leaf-stems of the calla; try to imagine where the water falling on them in a rain would run off; watch and see. The grooves or channels carry it toward the centre, and it reaches the ground just where it will most benefit the underground stem with its short roots. 7 97 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES Fig. 36. CALLA. SOME EARLY FLOWERS The leaves of the other early plants we have been studying do this in a less degree. Contrast this with what becomes of the rainfall on an oak, or some similar tree. You often seek shelter under a tree during a rain, because little of the water reaches the ground directly beneath the tree, but at the circumference what a drenching you would get. If you have ever seen a tree uprooted, you know that the fine roots that take in water are in just this region. But let us return to the calla and examine what is com- monly called the flower or the lily. The yellow column in the centre you can break up into many little bodies that give out white powder from their tops; these must be anthers. At the base are many little bodies that are clearly pistils. Now the botanists call each pistil of the calla a flower, and each stamen a flower, so the yellow column is really a flower cluster, and the big white wrapping, which you have called the flower, protects the flower cluster ana serves another purpose beside. When this white wrapping begins to unroll, you will find the stigmas down at the bottom ready for pollen, but the anthers will not shed pollen for some time. Now the bottom of the newly opened calla is a very cosy place for little insects to rest or spend the night; it affords some shelter, and is really much warmer than the outside world. If insects that have been getting pollen from older callas come to this opening one for shelter, they will cross pollinate it. L,ook for insects in your calla. The, Chinese lily is easily watched, and so is the iris, or flag, that will be in flower a little later. 99 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES CHAPTER VIII. THE AWAKENING OF THE TREES. The willows awaken first; in fact some willows hardly seem to nap at all. In autumn we saw them beginning to rid themselves of their leaves, but before the old leaves were quite gone, the brown buds along the stems were showing signs of life. Before Christmas, perhaps, some of the buds had thrown off these outside wraps, and had ap- peared in their inner coats of silky gray fur. Then we said the pussy willows were coming out. Some of these pussy-like buds were clearly baby leaves curled up to- gether; others were what even the botanists call catkins, which means little cats. As the catkins grew longer, it was easy to see that the gray coat was, like an old-time armour, made of overlapping scales, and indeed it was an armour against Jack Frost and other foes of the tender plants. Soon some catkins that grew in sunny places be- came yellow and fluffy and were covered with golden dust. Perhaps you can find some such catkins still, and can see that they are fluffy because stamens have pushed out from beneath every little scale; the yellow dust is the pollen they are shedding. But there is something else beneath every little scale, as the bees know very well; it is a very tiny, green peg covered with honey. Out of doors on a fine day, you can see how these minute drops of honey glisten in the sun , 100 Fig. 37. WIIyI,OW. 1. Staminate flowers. 2. Pistillate flowers. CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES and throngs of bees comedo this feast the willow provides. Often the humming of the bees helps one to find the tree. You can watch the bees as closely as you like; they are too busy to mind you in the least, for they are really doing two things- at once; they are circling round and round the cat- kins sucking up the honey, and at the same time they are brushing off the pollen that clings to their bodies, and packing it away in the pollen baskets on their legs. The bees will have many babies to feed, and the pollen is just what they need to store for them. But you find willow trees with catkins that are not yellow. Instead of stamens, a single pistil has pushed out from beneath each scale. Bach pistil has a little box for seed, the ovary, and two, tiny, moist stigmas to catch the pollen. Bach of these flowers, too, has its drop of honey for the bees. Now let us think out how the willows are rewarded for all this hospitality. The trees that have pistils are the seed-makers, but they must have pollen in order to make good seed, and the pollen is found on other trees. Perhaps the wind carries some pollen for the willows, but the wind is a wasteful servant, and the willows prefer to pay the bees to do their work. And this is how the bees help the willows. On the catkins that bear stamens the bees fill their baskets with pollen for their own use, but they also carry away very many grains that cling to their bodies. When they fly to other trees to get the honey among the pistils, the precious dust is rubbed off on the rough, moist stigmas, where each little grain can grow and help to make a seed. And so it happens that on the seed-making trees every catkin has its many pistils well supplied with seeds. You have seen these seeds bursting from their tiny pods and floating about on their white wings. You can see how light they are and can imagine how the winds will carry 102 Fig. :j8. YOUNG SHOOTS. 1. Alder. 2. Poplar, or cotton wood. 3. Sycamore. 4. Fisr. f>. \Vnlmit. CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES them far away from the parent tree. In the midst of our deserts many, many miles from willow-bordered streams, artesian wells are sometimes bored, and at once, as if by magic, little willow trees begin to grow around the pools. The sycamore buds that we found during the summer were snugly hidden within hollowed-out leaf stems. As the old leaves fell we found that the buds had other cover- ings of brown, varnished scales; and very good waterproof coats these are, protecting from dry winds and cold as well as from rain. The buds do not venture to discard their coats until March or April, and then each leaf is seen to be clad in thick, brown wool. There is a brown, woolly col- lar, too, wrapped about every leaf, but this wrapping in- stead of falling off, becomes bright green and helps in the food-making. Some of the buds, as they unfold, hang out little balls strung on slender stems. The balls are the flower clusters. Find out for yourselves which provide pollen, and which are the seed-makers. The sycamore has both kinds of flowers on the same tree, and trusts to the wind to carry pollen. The larger balls that have been hanging on the trees all winter, were flower clusters just a year ago, and now they are nearly ready to send their seeds out into the world. Perhaps as you handle them, they will suddenly crumble into a fluffy mass. On the trees they break up so suddenly that they almost seem to ex- plode, and the wind carries the seeds far and wide on their downy floaters. The bud coverings of cotton woods, or poplars, are much varnished, and the young leaves, too, prefer varnish to woolly or silken coats. Notice how the leaves are rolled in the bud. The alder leaves are folded like fans, and they too have varnish enough to look very shining and new as they unfold in the sunlight. Both of these trees flower early, before the leaves appear, and the wind carries pollen for them. 104 THE A WAKENING OF THE TREES The walnut flowers come later, and the leaves overtake them and get in the way of the pollen-carrying. The statninate flowers grow in catkins and drop pollen on their neighbors' backs in little heaps that will rise like a cloud with the first breeze. You can find baby walnuts not as large as peas. Be sure to notice that every one has a big rough stigma to catch the pollen in order to make the little plant grow within its shell. Now the little plants within the nut shells are richly provided with food, a sort of food that we like to eat our- selves, and so do the squirrels and other animals. You can think, then, why the walnut needs the bitter green rind until the inner shells are hard. The rinds turn brown finally, and are nearly the color of the ground, but the squirrels' sharp eyes can find them out, and their sharp teeth can gnaw through the shells. Still some nuts escape their foes, or are buried by them, and from these seeds new walnut trees spring up on our hillsides. In our orchards, too, there is the spring time awakening of the trees. The apricot and peach trees are like clouds of pale rose or pink, and through the snowy pear blossoms the tender green leaves are seen. There *-// 105 Fig. 39. PEACH BLOSSOMS CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES iMg. 40. PINK AND CYPRKSs. 1. Staminate flowers of pine. 2. Young pine cone. 3. Staminate flowers of cypress. 4, 5, G. Development of cypress cone. 106 THE AWAKENING OF THE TREES is fragrance and honey, and the bees come in throngs and carry pollen from flower to flower, and from tree to tree. And so, as the petals fall, the little fruits begin to appear. Watch them as they grow. Perhaps you will discover that the apple and quince behave differently from the peach, apricot and cherry. Did you ever think why fruits should be green and unfit to eat before the seeds are ripe, or of what use to the trees are the bright colors and delicious flavors of ripe fruits ? Do you know the secret of the fig trees, that a fig is really a hollow stem with flowers inside? The fig trees common in California orchards have pistillate flowers only. You can easily see this for yourselves in young figs. Since there are no flowers with stamens to provide pollen, the pistils are not able to make good seeds, so we must get new fig trees by planting cuttings from old ones. Fig trees have been brought to California from other countries. In their home country there are many fig trees that pro- duce pollen-bearing flowers, and the pollen is carried by very wee wasps that can crawl through the tiny openings at the end of the fig. There are other trees, as you know, that never drop all their leaves and take a complete rest; but most of them are sluggish during the autumn and early winter, and in the early spring time they, too, are awakened to more active life. The live oak puts on a beautiful new spring dress of pale green, and hangs out long catkins that fur- nish pollen. If you have sharp eyes, you can find the tiny flowers that will become acorns if the wind brings the pollen. The pine trees cautiously push out fresh green needles. They produce also clusters of pale yellow cones, filled to bursting with flour}' pollen. At the slightest jar, the pollen rises in yellow clouds ; in pine forests the lumbermen call these clouds sulphur showers. If you look at these pollen 107 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES grains under the microscope, you will understand why they rise ; every one is provided with two air bladders, each as large as itself, and these serve as floaters. So, although the seed-making cones are usually high up in the trees, they get plenty of pollen. See if you can find pollen-producing and seed-making cones on the cypress or other trees in parks or gardens. Find out if other evergreen trees, the orange, Hucalyptus, pepper, acacia and so forth, have the spring time awakening ; perhaps irrigation interferes with the natural habits of some of these trees. Then there are the smaller trees, the shrubs as we call them. Some are wakened by the first rains. There are California lilacs that send out flowers in December, and other kinds that take their places later on. So for several months there are sunny slopes that are misty-blue with lilac flowers. Bach tiny delicate flower spreads a feast for insect guests, but later on, puts pollen on its own stigmas. The poison oak is one of the first shrubs to waken and several of its relatives have winter or early spring flowers. The currant-gooseberry family, have very early habits. Before the lovely pink and white currant flowers and the fuchsia-like gooseberries are gone, other kinds are in flower. There are slender, yellow currant flowers that furnish honey to the earliest wild bees, and long, scarlet gooseberry flowers that entertain humming birds and the largest bees. The blackberries are quite awake in March. In some parts of the state, tree poppies flourish on moun- tain sides or in sandy washes. Before the snows have disappeared from the mountains, the manzanita bursts into bloom ; and such exquisite flowers as they are, those pink and white waxen bells ! Their delicacy is a surprise too, for the manzanita is a very rugged plant. Its thick, red stems branch and twist and interweave so that they form an almost impassable thicket, and the sturdy leaves stand erect and brave summer heat 108 THE AWAKENING OF THE TREES and winter snows. The flowers provide so much honey that humming birds are glad to come with the bees. The stamens are like little pepper boxes, and the guests must strike the handles and shake out the pollen. The madrone, which is larger than the manzanita, has quite as wonderful flowers. There are many other interesting mountain shrubs that help make up what we call chaparral. In summer time the wild mahogany has little fruits with silky, silver-gray plumes, and the greasewood fairly whitens the mountain slopes with its plume-like flower clusters. The wild cherries bloom earlier ; some of them have very beautiful evergreen leaves. Higher up in the mountains in Southern California, but nearer the valleys and coasts in the northern part of the state, are the majestic cone-bearing trees ; the cypresses, redwoods, the big trees, firs and pines, trees that have few equals in the wide world. John Muir, who knows and loves California mountains so well, has written much about these trees, and they have other friends who write and speak eloquently about them, and who are making great efforts to preserve our forests. But after all, their beauty and grandeur cannot be expressed in books, and very for- tunate indeed are the California boys and girls who can go to the mountains themselves, and learn to know the trees at first hand. 109 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES CHAPTER IX. SOflE SPRING FLOWERS. Our California poppy is known and admired the world over; but under cultivation it grows pale, and it is only here, in its native home, that it can be seen in all its splendor. We have turned thousands of acres of poppies into grain fields, orchards or city lots, but we still have left in our foothills and upland valleys, glowing poppy fields that are a marvel to strangers and a never-ending delight to ourselves. The Spanish people named this flower "cup of gold;" but the botanists called it Eschscholtzia. And why is our poppy so successful ? We cannot hope to learn all of its secrets, but some of its ways are easy to understand. It has an underground part that will last for years; besides, it will come up quickly from the seed. The leaves are just the sort to make the most of a .short rainy season, and the flowers take the best of care of their golden pollen; they open late and close early on fair days, and not at all in rough weather. Look into an open flower, and see how the petals hoard the pollen as it falls from the anthers. It offers no honey to guests, but the pollen is free to all who call on sunny days between 10 and 3 o'clock. The poppy takes lodgers, too, and several kinds of insects choose to sleep in this golden palace. So the poppy receives a fair share of insect attention, but not so much from bees as from flies and beetles. Some of the beetles are boorish 110 Fig. 41. POPPY AND CREAM-CUP Escbubolt fia California and Platystcmon California*. OF THK CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES enough to eat the petals of the flowers as well as the pollen. But the guests must carry much pollen for the poppies. It is generally believed that, although their own pollen may fall on their stigmas, they do not mature seed unless pollen is brought from other flowers. The cream-cups are cousins of the poppies, and have the same habit of dropping their cap of sepals as the petals unfold. This habit will help us to recognize other members of the poppy family, including the cultivated poppies. You may find the tree poppy with large, pale yellow flowers, or a pretty, little, bright red poppy whose petals fall off at a touch, or in the shady nooks of the canons, a very delicate, little, star-like, white poppy. In sandy washes, later in the season, the prickly poppy will send out great white flowers with crumpled petals and a great many yellow stamens. In some canons in Southern California, there is found, in May, a great, white poppy five or six inches in diameter, the plant being sometimes seven feet high. This giant poppy is called Coulter's poppy, or the Matilija poppy; it is being introduced into our gardens. And the mustard! No amount of cultivation seems likely to drive out this common weed. In Southern Cali- fornia it forms thickets so high that men on horseback can be quite hidden in it. It is true here, as in Palestine, that it grows with marvelous rapidity from the least of seeds, and that the birds lodge in the branches. It matures during the rainy season; in summer time there remain only the dead, gray stalks, from which the birds gather seeds. It is impossible to explain fully why the mustard can grow so rapidly and become strong enough to drive out other plants that we take great care to preserve; but some of its advan- tages are easily seen. It has rough leaves, with a biting taste that most animals must dislike, and it has a great abundance of flowers, in clusters that last a long time. It provides honey, and is visited by bees that efiect both close 112 SOME SPRING FLOWERS and cross pollination. Finally, each plant matures thousands of seeds that can retain their vitality for years. These are scattered far and wide. You have noticed that mustard flowers have four sepals, four petals, six stamens and one pistil. There are several other very common little flowers that have their parts in exactly the same numbers; see how many you can find before we take up the chapter on plant families. There is a pretty spring flower, Fig. 42, commonly known as the primrose, which you might take to belong to the mustard family. It has four sepals and four petals, but eight stamens, and its pistil is a puzzle; it is easy to find the little ball- like stigma and the slender style, but no ovules are to be found within the flower; they seem to be in the stem, instead. Now what holds the ovules must be the ovary, so the apparent stem is really the ovary, and it is called an inferior ovary, because it is below the rest of the flower. This primrose appears rather early in the spring; at first there are a few pale yellow flowers close to the ground, in a rosette of leaves; later on, numerous branches spread out flat on the 8 113 Fig. 42. PRIMROSE CEno- thera bistorta. CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES ground, bearing many flowers and queer, twisted pods. The primrose flower has usually a brown spot at the base of each petal; it produces a little honey, and the brown spots help the insects to find it, but the flower is not very hospitable, and can pollinate itself. Really, this flower is not a true primrose; it belongs to the evening-primrose family, and its botanical name is CEnothera bistorta. There is an (Bnothera you are pretty sure to find on the beaches; its full name is (Enothera cheiranthifolia, variety suffruticosa, but notwithstanding its ugly name, it is a pretty plant, with its silken, silvery leaves and pale yellow flowers. It is a sturdy plant, too; in spite of all the intense light and heat from the sand, it keeps its leaves and goes on flowering all the year round. Can you think why this is possible ? You are almost sure to meet other handsome members of this family later on, and you can always recognize them because of the inferior ovary and the parts in fours. Now, if possible, make a collection of the following flowers: Gilias, baby-blue-eyes, Phacelias, forget-me-nots, both white and yellow, nightshade, and morning-glories. The motto of this group of flowers might be, " In union there is strength," for all of them have their petals united into tubes, cups, funnels, wheels or something of the sort. All of them, too, have the stamens growing on the corolla. Notice the number of parts ; five always, until you come to the pistil. Now, many of these plants are annuals, that is, they live but part of a year ; so it is very necessary that they make good seed, and all of them invite insects to carry pollen. The Gilias have always one ovary, which is three- celled, and one style, but three stigmas. There are more than seventy kinds of Gilias in California. The slender one in the picture, No. 2, Fig. 43, is Gilia multicaulis, which means a Gilia with many stems. Its flowers are blue, 114 Fig. 43. GUPTAS. 1. Ground pink, G. diantboides. 2. G. multicaulis. 3. Mountain pink, G. Calif ornica. CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN 7 HEIR HOMES sometimes very pale blue, or nearly white ; they are rather small, and grow in small clusters, but they are very fragrant and furnish a goodly supply of honey. No. i in the picture is Gilia dianthoides. It is the well-known ground-pink of Southern California, and it sometimes actually carpets the ground. It is. an exquisite little flower, with its lilac or pink, satin petals, slashed and fringed at the edges, and banded with crimson, yellow, and brown at the base. But this elegant Gilia is not generous in supplying honey, so, while butterflies, who seem to prefer finery to food, usually choose fine-lady dianthoides, the less showy blue Gilia is the bees' favorite. On a whole hillside, gay with wild flowers of many sorts, you will often find the bees selecting only this modest blue Gilia. Both Gilias keep open house on pleasant days, but only from about 10 in the morning until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. They open their anthers early, making them into little pollen-covered balls, which stand guard in a ring about the entrance to the honey. Usually they hold their stigmas above the anthers, and do not unfold their own stigmas until after they have furnished pollen for those of other flowers. The stigmas of the little blue flower often lie against the lower edge, and you can distinctly see the bee strike them as he thrusts his head into the flower ; you can also see that his head is dusty with the blue pollen of other flowers. Gilia dianthoides, after a while, curls down its stigmas among its own anthers, and flowers of both Gilias are likely to pollinate themselves as they close at night. Besides this, the fallen pollen collects all down the corolla tube, and as the corolla finally falls off", some pollen is sure to be brushed against the stigmas ; so these Gilias can pollinate themselves if insects fail them. The other Gilia in the picture is Gilia Calif ornica, or the mountain-pink. The plants are shrubby, and are two 116 or three feet high. The flowers are very handsome and showy, but it is really one of the most unamiable of the Gilias; if you have ever tried to pluck it, you know how savage the leaves are ; and the great, lovely, pink flowers seem to provide no honey at all ; besides this, they keep their pollen away down in the narrow corolla tube, apparently only for their own use, for it falls directly on the stigmas. I have never seen this inhospitable flower visited, and its attractive corolla seems to be of no use to the plant. The botanical name for baby- blue-eyes is Nemophila. There are several kinds quite common in the state. In Southern California the one most common in the canons has very delicate blue flowers, while the kind that grows in open places has larger, deep blue flowers. But the most clever Nemophila is the one in the picture, Fig. 44 ; it is common in very shady places ; it has not blue flowers at all, but large, dull violet ones. It is rarely gathered, because the stems are so weak that they break in the hand- ling, and the whole plant is very prickly. A bit of its epidermis under the microscope is shown in the picture ; the prickles, or 117 Fig. 44. CLIMBING Nemopbila aurita. Fig. 45. SOME MEMBERS OF THE BI^UE-EYES FAMILY. 1, Ettisia cbrysantbemfolia. 2. fr-acelia Wbittavia. 3. Wild heliotrope, Phacelia anacetifolia. SOME SPRING FLOWERS more truly hooks, serve at least two purposes ; they defend the plant against enemies and help it in climbing. This Nemophila has very little woody tissue, but by hook- ing itself, by leaf, stem, or calyx, to any convenient sup- port, it gets up into light and air, and is able to display its flowers to the insect world. I have seen Nemophilas that, as early as February, had climbed to the top of a high fence, and were looking over for something else to grasp. The flowers know well how to secure insect help. At the base of each flower are ten tiny saucers that hold the honey ; these saucers fit together in pairs, forming five little hollow balls; so the honey is protected from dust, wind and rain, and is reserved for large insects, since small ones could not open the balls. The anthers face upward as they shed their pollen, so guests are sure to carry some away ; later on, the two stigmas are held up where they are sure to be struck. The Phacelias belong to the same family as the Nemo- philas, and a very vigorous branch they are ! There are many kinds of Phacelias ; the flowers vary much in size and in color and form, but they always grow in clusters that last a long time, and coil at the ends like a scorpion's tail ; the botanists call this form of cluster " scorpioid." Pha- celias are usually rough or sticky, and know well how to defend themselves. No. 3, Fig. 45, is Phacelia tanaceti folia, a common, wayside weed in some places in California. Its flowers, like those of the Nemophila, have ten scales on the corolla tube, but the scales are not at the very bottom, and instead of being saucers to hold the honey, they fit closely together, forming a floor, or false bottom, a little way above the real base of the flower. The honey is at the very base, and the plates above fit so closely that only a strong slender tongue can get it. So this Phacelia keeps its honey for the larger and more useful guests ; the bees know this very well, and come in_throngs, carrying pollen from younger flowers and rubbing it on the stigmas of older ones. 119 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES Fig. 46. WHITE FORGET-ME-NOT Plagiobotbrys notbofulvus 120 SOME SPRING FLOWERS No. 2, Fig. 45, is Phacelia Whitlavia, with great, bell- shaped flowers of royal purple. Its flowers are really mag- nificent, but they are not so clever as those of the other Phacelia. You can read their story for yourselves if you watch the flowers out of doors on a still, sunny day. No. i is a small specimen of another of the baby-blue-eyes family that is very common in shady places. It has a pretty first name, Ellisia ; the rest of the name is chrysanthemifolia^ which means only chrysanthemum-like leaves. Really, they are much prettier than chrysanthemum leaves ; they are often mistaken for ferns early in the season before the dainty little white flowers appear. The flowers provide a little honey, but as they are very small, and grow in shaded places, the bees are not sure to seek them, so they con- tentedly pollinate themselves if guests fail to come. The forget-me-not, or heliotrope family, like the Pha- celias, has always scorpioid flower clusters. Our forget- me-nots have small flowers, but perhaps you can make out that they have one style, one stigma, and an ovary that breaks up into four parts. There are many kinds of the white forget-me-nots. The one in the picture blooms early; in Southern California, in February and March, it actually whitens grassy slopes and meadows, and gives out a delicious fragrance; and the botanists have called this dainty blossom Plagiobothrys nothofulvus ! The flowers are too small to provide much honey, and they seem able to pollinate themselves, but they are sometimes visited by small bees, flies and butterflies. They remain open at night, and, because of their whiteness and fragrance, must attract night guests also. The yellow forget-me-nots are such coarse weeds that we hardly like to call them forget-me- nots ; in some places the children call them woolly breeches. They are sturdy successful plants. They grow rapidly , are well armed against all foes, and are on the best of 121 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES terms with the bees. They have, too, excellent devices for scattering their seeds, as you can see for yourselves. The flowers of the nightshade and morning-glory place them in this group of plants. Unlike most of the plants we have been considering, these are usually perennials. Some species are world-wide weeds. As we noticed in the Fig. 47. NIGHTSHADE Solatium Douglasii. 122 SOMEl SPRING FL O WERs autumn, the nightshade can flower all the year round in our climate ; and one European morning-glory seems able to drive out all other vegetation in some California fields. Watch the climbing of our native morning-glories and com- pare with the chilicothe, the poison oak and the Nemophila aurita. The most attractive nightshade of Southern California is found in the foot-hills; it has large and very fragrant blue flowers. Unlike the flowers we have been studying in this group, the nightshade provides no honey, so the corolla needs no tubular part. Its five, large, yellow anthers lie close together, forming a cone that reminds us of the shoot- ing star anthers. Disturb this cone slightly, and a little cloud of pollen rises. It is shed through minute chinks at the ends of the anthers; indeed, we might call these pepper- box anthers. The bees seem to know all about this, and you will sometimes find numbers of them collecting pollen from the anthers, always striking the stigmas first. The more common nightshade, pictured in Fig. 47, has smaller, white or bluish- white flowers ; it is not so attractive to bees as the fragrant, blue-flowered one. The nightshades have the same device for self pollination that we found in the shooting star ; the style of the older flowers turns upward, holding the stigma where pollen will fall upon it. The morning-glory keeps its honey curiously hidden where the bees seldom try to get it, but they strike the stigmas when they come for pollen. The morning-glory, too, seems able to pollinate itself. But surely the queen among all our California spring flowers, is the Mariposa lily, or butterfly tulip. As seen in the picture, the Mariposas are of two distinct forms. There are dainty nodding lilies, sometimes called globe tulips, the white one of the picture, the satin-bell or fairy's lantern, and a yellow one called golden lily-bell, are the most com- mon. Their petals open very slightly, and are covered with 123 Fig. 48. MARIPOSAS. /. Calochorttu albus. 2. Calocbortus Catalince. SOME SPRING FLOWERS long hairs within ; so that the children call the flowers cat's ears. They serve some honey, and entertain some guests, but they are able to pollinate themselves. There are also the larger, upright, cup-shaped Mariposas that are much more common, and few flowers can rival these stately chalices in beauty of form or color. In the valleys the lilies are usually lilac, cream or pale rose, with crimson spots, or yellow with golden brown or purple markings ; a desert species is flame color with royal purple honey guides; in the mountains there are azure, violet, purple and inter- mediate shades with spots and rings of other tints. And of what use is all this beauty to the plant itself ? Really, the Mariposa does not calculate closely in her hospitality, as we shall see. Honey is served in the tiny bowls at the base of each petal, and the protecting fringes and borders, in elegantly contrasting colors, serve also as honey guides. This honey is accessible to many guests; indeed, there are spiders that find it worth while to assume the exact color of the flowers, and to lie in wait for the Mariposa's insect guests. The Mariposa serves pollen, too, opening anthers so slowly that the supply lasts for several days. She affords shelter also ; there is a fuzzy, homeless bachelor bee that chooses to spend his nights in this stately palace ; you may find him early in the afternoon, already snuggled down for the night, standing on his head, his antennae tucked neatly back. Now it is not until the petals begin to fade that the Mariposa's own stigmas are exposed, and even then an entering guest is not sure to strike them ; so, many of the visits paid to flowers must be of no use to them. I,et us hope that the bachelor bee brings pollen, or that in nestling down he scatters some of the stored pollen on the stigmas. The Mariposa has bulbs as well as seeds, and however greedily we may pluck the flowers, we usually leave the bulbs ; so possibly our Mariposas may be spared to us for many years to come. 125 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES CHAPTER X. PLANTS WITH MECHANICAL GENIUS. In olden times if a man's father were a baker, he him- self would be a baker, and so would his son and his son's son. Every man followed the trade practiced for genera- tions by other members of his family, and so all became skilled workmen. This is true in some countries to-day. It is also true that there are some families of musicians or even of literary men. In the plant world, we have one family at least, the pea family, with a talent in one direction; nearly every member of this family has some ingenious mechanical device. It is a large family and furnishes us many beautiful and useful plants. It includes the lupines, which make beautiful so many spots in California, from the sea beaches to the very mountain tops. The lupines adapt themselves to all condi- tions. There are annuals that grow rapidly, and flower and fruit during the few months of the rainy season ; and there are perennials that, even in Southern California, can keep on blooming all the year. On sea beaches, the lupines send out roots sometimes thirty feet long, and clothe them- selves in woolly or thick, silken coats; along streams, the smooth, bright green leaves of one lupine are six or eight inches across, and the flower clusters reach up higher than a man's head ; while up in the mountains there are little perennial lupines but a few inches high, with leaves soft and silky as seal skin, and sturdy little stems and roots that 126 LUPINE, ALFALFA AND BUR-CLOVER Fig. 49. LUPINE Lupinus sparsiflorus 127 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES store food. Some lupines come up year after year, like weeds, in cultivated land ; and several kinds have leaves that know how to fold at night, or during dry winds. The flowers of all lupines grow in clusters that last for weeks, sometimes for months, and they all have the same clever device for pollination. Take the cluster of any large- flowered lupine you can find, and examine the flowers care- fully. The calyx seems to consist of two parts; really, there are five sepals united in two groups. There is one very large petal that stands upright and is called the banner; the other four petals form a- platform for guests, and enclose the stamens and pistil; the two outside petals, which are called wings, usually cohere slightly at the tip; besides this, they are fitted very neatly into the inner petals so that they act with them; see for yourselves just how. If you have one of the younger flowers, you will find the two inner petals so much united that you are likely to mistake them for one, but notice that at the base they are quite distinct, and that there is also a tiny opening at the very tip; these partially united petals are supposed to resemble the bottom of a boat and are called the keel. Snugly tucked away in the keel are the ten stamens, and within their united fila- ments is the pistil, the style and stigma projecting slightly beyond. To understand all about the stamens you need to begin with the bud; you will find that the five higher, longer anthers shed their pollen in the keel before the ban- ner rises, while the other five, by means of their thickened filaments, hold the shed pollen firmly in place in the tip of the keel. Now, when a bee comes to call on a lupine, he is sure to alight on the lower petals ; imitate with your pencil his weight on this part of the flower, and see what happens ; there is always a little jet of pollen forced out. You can think how the lupine does this. The pollen has been packed away in the tip of the keel and held there by the 128 LUPINE; ALFALFA AND BUR-CLOVER filaments ; as the weight of the bee presses down on the keel, the stiff stamens push up the pollen and force it through the opening at the tip. So the lupine lets its guests pump out pollen. The bees seem to appreciate the pollen very much, for, in spite of the fact that the lupines provide no honey, the larger and more fragrant kinds are much visited by bees. It is most entertaining to watch them stow away the pollen in their baskets as they pump it out. Hive bees can visit about twelve flowers per minute, but a great bumble-bee can pump out and pack away the pollen of thirty-five flowers in the same time. Since bees are so swift and industrious, do you wonder that many flowers favor them for guests ? Perhaps this is why most of our lupines have attained the bees' favorite color, blue. Of course you can see that at every visit the bee first strikes the % stigma, which is mature in the older flowers; that is, he cross pollinates the flowers. The lupines have also a mechanical device for scattering seed, a device that is used by other members of the pea family. The fruit, 3^ou see, is a kind of a pod ; it is called a legume, and since all members of this family have the fruit, a legume, the L,atin"name of the family is I,egumi- nosse. The legume of the lupine has along its edges an elastic tissue that causes the two parts, when separated, to coil and twist back with considerable force, so scattering the seeds. The alfalfa is a member of the family Leguminosae. You will recognise the family likeness at once when you look at the flowers, for they have banner, wings and keel, as the lupines have. The alfalfa is a European plant, intro- duced here by way of Mexico and Chili. It is a great boon to our western country, where the upper layers of soil become so dry during the rainless months, for the alfalfa roots will grow down a considerable distance to find a moist subsoil; we sometimes find it growing in waste 9 129 Fig. 50. ALFALFA AND BUR- CLOVER Medicago saliva and Medicago denticulata. 1. Exploded flower of alfalfa. 2. Unexploded flower with banner removed, top view. 3. Wing. 4. Keel. LUPINE, ALFALFA AND BUR-CLOVER places year after year without cultivation. The flowers of the alfalfa, too, have their special mechanical trick. Examine a cluster of flowers carefully, looking each flower squarely in the face. Perhaps you will find that some flowers, like the enlarged one in the picture, have the column of stamens and pistil close against the banner, while in other flowers nothing of the sort is there. Take one of these latter flowers, and imagine where an insect seeking honey would thrust its tongue; imitate this action by inserting a needle, and instantly, the stamens and pistil fly up like a "jack-in-the-box." Now let us look for this machinery. Remove the calyx and banner, and push back the column of stamens and pistil into the keel. You will see that there are two little projections, one frcTm each wing, that are fitted over this column, also that the wings are firmly fastened to the keel by means of other projections that fit into pockets. So the column was at first held down in the keel by means of these pro- jections from the wings. The honey is at the very base of the stamens, and is reached only through two little open- ings on the upper side. When an insect alights on the lower part of the flower, and thrusts his tongue directly in for honey, as you did the needle, the tongue separates the pro- jections, and the stamens and pistil fly up with much force and strike the tongue. The pistil is likely to strike first, and the whole tongue becomes newly dusted with pollen. Of course this is a very rude way for the flower to treat its guest. The blow must be disagreeable, and the bees and butterflies seem to dislike it, for some of them have learned to get honey by inserting the tongue at the base and side of the flower ; in this way they obtain honey without touching the stigma or pollen, and the flower, on account of its rude behavior, gets no help from the guest. Indeed, while the'alfalfa has a very ingenious mechanism, 131 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES it has really not so good a method as the lupine, for only the first guest strikes the alfalfa stigmas and pollen, while the lupine furnishes pollen and has stigmas struck over and over again ; the pollen of the lupines is always protected, while the alfalfa anthers are quite exposed after the explosion of the flowers. The only advantage of the alfalfa is that butterflies, as well as bees, can pollinate the flowers. Now the most wonderful part of the story is, that the wee flowers of the bur-clover have exactly the same ma- chinery as the alfalfa. Their pistil and stamens, too, jump up like a "jack-in-the-box" and strike the guest's tongue; but the column of stamens and pistil in the bur-clover is so short that it cannot trouble the insect much, and after it has sprung up against the banner, it is still protected by the wings. This makes it difficult for you to see the flower explode, but if you have patience and good eyes, you can 'find the projections on the tiny wings, and the pockets in the keel. The bur-clover flowers, in spite of being so tiny, furnish a good amount of honey, and the bees seem to find it more readily than we can. Now take a stem of bur-clover, and note the changes from the flower to the bur. Would you have thought that the bur is really the same sort of fruit as the lupine pod ? By looking closely you will see that the bur is at first a tiny pod, and that it grows two rows of teeth on one edge, takes a little turn, then twists again and again, until it is the hooked coil, or bur, that fastens itself so readily to our clothes. The alfalfa, too, has a coiled pod, but it is not provided with teeth. The true clovers are another branch of this ingenious family, 'Leguminosse. We have some very pretty clovers in California, but they are not such an important part of the vegetation as they are in countries with more moisture, in our Eastern States or England, for instance. A head of 132 LUPINE, ALFALFA AND BUR-CLOVER clover is, of course, a flower cluster, and you can easily see that, like the lupine and alfalfa, each little flower has banner, wings and keel; that is, they are what are called "butterfly" flowers. If you have patience, you can find that the clovers, too, have mechanical contrivances for keeping wings and keel united, and that they serve honey. Some clovers trust absolutely to their insect guests, and cannot pollinate themselves at all. This is true of a beau- tiful, large-flowered clover that is much used as a pasture plant in many countries; its flowers are so long that they must have bumble-bees to carry pollen for them, and if we try to grow the clover where there are not enough big bumble-bees, it will not produce good seed. So they jokingly say that England owes her beautiful clover fields to* the old maids that keep the cats that kill the mice that eat the bumble-bees that pollinate the clover. Our wild peas have such large flowers that you can very easily find their honey and the beautiful devices by which the wings and keel are held together. They have, also, little brushes on their styles for sweeping out pollen, a little for each guest to carry away. Be sure to watch how the wild peas climb. There are several kinds of wild peas that you are likely to find, and also many other common kinds of L,eguminos3e. There are the "rattle-pods," so common in sandy soil; this plant is called loco weed by the stockmen, and is believed to loco horses, that is, to make them crazy. Then there is the Hosackia, or L,otus, group of small lyeguminous plants. One kind is pictured in Fig. n, Chapter III, and you are Hkely to find others. In your fields and gardens, too, you will find many members of this family, some useful like the peas, beans and peanuts, and some with very showy flowers; see how many you can rec- ognize, and try to discover the devices of their flowers and fruit. There are other families with mechanical devices, 133 Fig. 51. FIIyAREE Er odium cicutarium. LUPINE, ALFALFA AND BUR-CLOVER especially for scattering seed. The Geranium family, which includes the filaree as well as the cultivated geraniums, is an example. The filaree, like the bur-clover, is believed to have been brought to California from Europe, perhaps with the grain seed imported by the fathers in the good old mission days. The filaree and bur-clover take kindly to our climate, the rainy season giving them all the time they need to mature their numerous seeds; and how they have spread themselves over this great state of ours ! from the lovely fertile valleys overlooking the sea, where the fathers loved to plant their missions, up to almost inaccessible mountain meadows two hundred miles from the coast, and thousands - of feet above it; for with the filaree and bur-clover came the sheep to carry the seeds in their wool wherever sheep can go. You all know the filaree fruits; perhaps you call them clocks; let us trace them back to the flowers. Watch the little bluish flowers on your way to school in the morning; notice how they turn to the sun, and find out where they keep their honey. The filaree, like the bur-clover, prac- tices such bountiful hospitality as it must have seen in the old California days. Every flower provides five generous drops of honey, which glisten in the sun and are free to all who come. The pollen and stigmas are kept where the larger guests will strike them; but the smaller ones will not pay for their entertainment, and the filaree seems quite able to pollinate itself; at any rate, it always ripens an abundance of good seed. After the petals fall, the five little pistils in the centre of the flower, also the part of the flower that holds them, the receptacle, begin to grow, and they grow, and grow, until they are about two inches long. Now if you will sit down in the midst of the filaree on a warm April or May morning, you can see the little brown "clocks" shooting off from the parent plant in every direc- tion; you can even hear the soft patter as they fall. Pick 135 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES a filaree fruit that has turned brown and is just ready to explode, and give it a little twist. The five pistils spring away from the receptacle like bits of bent whalebone, and for much the same reason. As they fly off, they may be caught and carried with the wind because of the long silky hairs of the styles. Now look carefully at the seed part, or rather at the brown ovary wall that contains the seed; it is tipped with a little hook and is covered with bristles that slope outward and upward. Put one in your sleeve and see how easily it slips in, and how troublesome it is to get out. So these bristles must be of great use to the seeds in keeping them in the sheep's wool until they are carried a long distance. The silky hairs, then, are of use when the wind is the car- rier; the bristles, when the sheep serve the plant; but the most interesting feature is the twisting motion that gives the fruits their name of ''clocks." The clock you have put in your sleeve has probably turned round several times while you were reading this. I^et it finish twisting, then put it in water and watch it; before long it will be per- fectly straight; as it dries, it twists again, and so on. Think of the use of the coiling and uncoiling to the little fruits that lie in the dust on the ground through all the dry season. With every dew or fog they uncoil; as the sun comes out, they twist again. Do you not see that this helps to bury them in the dust ? If there is moisture enough to soften the soil, it makes the clocks uncoil at the same time, and they will actually screw themselves into the earth; so by the time the autumn rains come, our filaree seeds have pretty well planted themselves; we have seen how promptly they spring up after the first rain. The geraniums of our gardens have the same mechan- ical devices for seed distribution. The pollination of their flowers, too, is very interesting, and you can find out their story for yourselves. Notice whether the flowers are reg- 136 LUPINE, ALFALFA AND BUR-CLOVER ular; find the honey; think whether all the guests could get it; where the guest would alight; whether he would strike the pollen or stigmas in the younger flowers; in older ones. Then watch for the guests. What sort of guest do you think might choose the brilliant scarlet flow- ers ? Which colors would be the best for the night moths ? There is still another family that uses either twisting or bending and unbending movements to scatter seed, the grass family. Several of our California grasses have this habit; see if you can find them. 137 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES CHAPTER XI. PLANTS OF HIGH RANK. Men attain high rank because of marked ability ; plants, too, are considered of high rank when they are specially well fitted to accomplish their ends. Of course the flowers of higher rank unite their petals to secure the more desirable guests, and many of them make their corol- las two-lipped, using the two upper petals for one lip, the three lower for the other ; the lower lip usually serves as a platform for the guest, as we shall see later on. In this chapter we shall study some common flowers belonging to two two-lipped, or bilabiate families. The Mimulus, or monkey-flower, Fig. 52, belongs to one of these families. The kind of Mimulus in the picture grows on a shrub several feet high. In many parts of California there are hillsides entirely covered with these shrubs, and it is worth going far to see them when they are in full flower in late spring time. They bloom most pro- fusely, and the flowers are large and beautifully colored ; sometimes pale yellow or salmon, sometimes buffer orange, sometimes quite red. There is another verj' common Mimulus, which grows along streams or irrigating ditches; it has large yellow flowers with spotted, nearly closed throats, the shape of the flowers suggesting the common name, snapdragons. Now both kinds of Mimulus have exclusive flowers. The shrubby Mimulus has corolla tubes two or three inches 138 BILABIATE FLOWERS Fig. 52. MONKEY-FLOWER Mimulus glutinosus. long, and so invites only humming birds and the largest moths. The other Mimulus has a shorter corolla, but by having the throat nearly closed and covered with dense hairs, it keeps out many small insects. One would expect such exclusive flowers to proffer abundant hospitality to their chosen guests, but they are much more showy than generous ; they serve little honey, and bees and humming birds are quick to learn this. In the day time one rarely 139 CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES sees the paler flowers of the shrubby Mimulus visited, but perhaps the night moths pay them frequent visits; they could find them easily. The red flowers seem to be visited by humming birds more frequently than the other varieties ; perhaps where the red flowers prevail, it is because they are near humming birds' haunts. You will occasionally see large bees forcing entrance through the closed throat of the other Mimulus. But both kinds of Mimulus have excellent devices for making the most of a few visits. Close against the upper lip, or roof, of the flower lie the stigmas and anthers. The stigma consists of two lips, which lie open if the flower has not been recently visited ; touch the lips, and they promptly close ; so, if the stigma is touched by a guest's head with pollen on it, what is left there is securely shut in. The anthers are peculiar ; by looking closely r you will find that there are really four of them, each with two cells ; they lie close together, quite below the stigma. Press against them and see how they open and leave pollen on your finger, just as it would be left on the head of a large insect or of a humming bird crowding into the flower to reach the honey. Notice that the Mimulus needs but four stamens and one pistil. You will find that all plants of high rank are economical. The members of these bilabiate families have rarely more than four stamens, and many of them succeed with only two. The Collinsia, Fig. 53, sometimes called innocence, belongs to the same family as the Mimulus. It, too, has a bilabiate corolla, four stamens and one pistil. The lower lip, of course, consists of three united petals, but the mid- dle petal is folded so that it resembles the keel of the lupine; in fact, it serves the same purpose; it enfolds the stamens and pistil, protecting the pollen and stigma, but when a bee alights on the lower lip, the fold spreads enough to allow pollen or stigma to rub against its body. The 140 Fig. 53. INNOCENCE Collinsia bicolor. CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES Collinsia does not furnish so much pollen as the lupine, but the supply lasts a long time, because the anthers shed pollen one ' after another; besides, the Collinsia provides honey, saving it for the bees, and advertising it by pretty spots and lines. The stigmas are mature in the older flowers. Another member of this family is the owl's-clover, or the painter's brush, Fig. 54. The pink or purplish and white flowers, grow together in a very social way, and the little leaves or bracts among them have their tips white or pink, thus helping to make the cluster showy. Each flower keeps its honey at the bottom of a tube too deep and narrow for bees and small insects, yet it dares to keep its stigma, which is like a fuzzy ball, quite above its anthers; that is, the flower trusts entirely to its guests for pollina- tion. Now the anthers are tucked away in the upper lip, and the queer, puffy, white, lower lip is not large enough for a platform, still some bees know how to get the pollen. They cling to the upper lip while they drag out the pollen, and so must strike the stigma. Butterflies and moths seem to be the preferred guests; and the white lower lip shows night moths the way to the honey. The other flower in the same picture, has several common names, painted cup, scarlet painter's brush, Indian plume, etc. It is a plant beloved by the humming birds. The tips of the bracts and the calyxes, as well as the corollas, are scarlet, the humming bird's favorite color; and the honey is beyond the reach of most other guests. The lower lip of the flower can scarcely be discerned, but a platform is of no use to humming birds. You have seen them dart from cluster to cluster, pausing the merest instant at each flower as they sip its honey. No other guest is half so swift, so it is not strange that so many flowers reserve their honey specially for humming birds. When the painted cup grows in masses, one rarely fails to see the birds paying their visits; Fig. 64. OWL'S CLOVER AND PAINTED CUP- Ortbocarpus purpurascens and Castilleia par