Part 28

This surpasses all known species in the height and beauty of its flower-panicles; but, once the season of flowering and fruiting has been consummated, its life mission is fulfilled, and the plant dies. The dead stalks remain standing sometimes for years upon the mountain-sides.

The seeds of this species, as well as those of the tree-yucca, are made into flour by the Indians; and from the leaves they obtain a soft, white fiber, which they use in making the linings of the coarse saddle-blankets they weave from Yucca Mohavensis. The undeveloped flowering shoots they consider a great delicacy, either raw or prepared as mescal. They gather great numbers of the plants when just at the right stage, and strip off the leaves, leaving round masses. These they prepare after the manner of a clam-bake, and when the pile is pulled to pieces and the mescal is taken out, it has a faint resemblance to a baked sweet apple, and is of about the same consistency. The whole mass is a mixture of sweet, soft pulp and coarse white fibers much like manilla rope-yarn.

RUBY LILY. CHAPARRAL LILY. REDWOOD LILY.

Lilium rubescens, Wats. Lily Family.

Hab.--The Coast Ranges, from Marin County to Humboldt County.

This is the most charming of all our Californian lilies, even surpassing in loveliness the beautiful Washington lily; and it is said to be the most fragrant of any in the world. It resembles the Washington lily; but its flowers are fuller in form, with wider petals and shorter tube, and it has a smaller bulb. It sends up a noble shaft, sometimes seven feet high, with many scattered whorls of undulate leaves, and often bears at the summit as many as twenty-five of the beautiful flowers. These are at first pure white, dotted with purple, but they soon take on a metallic luster and begin to turn to a delicate pink, which gradually deepens into a ruby purple. Mr. Purdy mentions having seen a plant with a stalk nine feet high, bearing thirty-six flowers.

The favorite haunts of this lily are high and inaccessible ridges, among the chaparral, or under the live-oak or redwood. Comparatively few people know of its existence, though living within a few miles of it, because they rarely ever visit these out-of-the-way fastnesses of nature.

Mr. Burroughs has somewhere said: "Genius is a specialty; it does not grow in every soil, it skips the many and touches the few; and the gift of perfume to a flower is a special grace, like genius or like beauty, and never becomes common or cheap." Certainly these blossoms have been richly endowed with this charming gift, and their delicious fragrance wafted by the wind often betrays their presence upon a hillside when unsuspected before, so that one skilled in woodcraft can often trace them by it.

THISTLE-POPPY. CHICALOTE.

Argemone platyceras, Link and Otto. Poppy Family.

Stems.--One to two and one half feet high; hispid throughout, or armed with rigid bristles or prickles. Sap yellow. Leaves.--Thistle-like; three to six inches long. Flowers.--White; two to four inches in diameter. Sepals.--Three; spinosely beaked. Petals.--Four to six. Stamens.--Numerous. Filaments slender. Ovary.--Oblong; one-celled. Stigma three- or four-lobed. Capsule very prickly. Hab.--Dry hillsides from Central California southward.

The thistle-poppy would be considered in any other country a surpassingly beautiful flower, with its large diaphanous white petals and its thistly gray-green foliage, but in California it must yield precedence to the Matilija poppy. It resembles the latter very closely in its flower, and is often mistaken for it. It may be known by its yellow juice, its prickly foliage, and its very prickly capsules. I believe the flowers are somewhat more cup-shaped than those of Romneya.

It affects dry hill-slopes and valleys, often otherwise barren, where it grows luxuriantly, and sometimes attains a height of six feet, being in full bloom in May. There, where one is unprepared for such a sight, it becomes an object of startling beauty.

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Malacothrix saxatilis, Torr. and Gray. Composite Family.

Stems.--Stout; a foot or two high; woody. Leaves.--Lanceolate to spatulate; one or two inches long; entire or pinnatifid; somewhat succulent. Flower-heads.--Terminating the paniculate branches; large; two inches or so across; white, changing to rose or lilac; of ray-flowers only. Involucre.--Campanulate or hemispherical; six lines high, with many imbricated scales passing downward into loose, awl-shaped bracts. Hab.--The Coast, from Santa Barbara southward.

This beautiful plant is a dweller upon the ocean cliffs, and may be seen in abundance from the car-windows just before the train reaches Santa Barbara going north. The stems are woody and very leafy, and the plants are usually covered all over the top with the showy flower-heads.

M. tenuifolia, Torr. and Gray, is a very tall, slender, sparsely leafy plant with fragile, airy white flowers. This is common along the dusty roadsides of the south in early summer.

SALAL. WINTERGREEN.

Gaultheria Shallon, Pursh. Heath Family.

Shrubby, and one to three or more feet high or prostrate. Leaves.--Alternate; short-petioled; ovate to elliptical; pointed; two to four inches long; leathery; bristle-toothed when young; evergreen. Flowers.--Manzanita-like; slenderer; glandular-viscid; white or pinkish. Ovary.--Five-celled. Style single. Fruit.--Black; berry-like; aromatic; edible. (Otherwise like Arctostaphylos Manzanita.) Hab.--Coast woods, from Santa Barbara County to British Columbia.

The floor of the redwood forest in our northern coast counties is often carpeted with this little undershrub, while in other places one can wade waist-deep in it. It grows much larger north of us, and upon Vancouver Island it forms dense, impenetrable thickets. Its dark-purple berries have a very agreeable flavor, and form an important article of diet among the Oregon Indians, who call them "salal."

CALIFORNIAN SPIKENARD.

Aralia Californica, Wats. Ginseng Family.

Root.--Thick; aromatic. Stems.--Eight to ten feet high. Leaves.--Bipinnate; or the upper pinnate, with one or two pairs of leaflets. Leaflets.--Cordate-ovate; four to eight inches long; serrate. Flowers.--White; two lines long; in globular umbels, arranged in loose panicles a foot or two long. Pedicels four to six lines long. Calyx.--Five-toothed or entire. Petals and Stamens.--Five. Ovary.--Two- to five-celled. Styles united to the middle. Fruit.--A purple berry. Hab.--Widely distributed; on stream-banks.

In moist, cool ravines, where the sun only slants athwart the branches and a certain dankness always lingers, the Californian spikenard scents the air with its peculiar odor. It closely resembles A. racemosa of the Eastern States, but it is a larger, coarser plant in every way. It throws up its tall stems with a fine confidence that there will be ample space for its large leaves to spread themselves uncrowded. Its feathery panicles of white flowers are followed by clusters of small purple berries, and are rather more delicate than we should expect from so large a plant.

YERBA MANSA.

Anemopsis Californica, Hook. Yerba Mansa Family.