The herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1893-1900, 1897-07-25
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!: OUR NATIVE FLORA :
: FOR GARDENS s:
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The persistence with which every one
wants something just like every one
else has is one of the strange things of
this world, and nowhere does it seem so
stupid as in the everlasting recurrence
Of the same old palms. the same old
this, that and the other, with which we
are all so familiar in Southern Califor-
MIA. Given one place here and you have
very nearly a model of the rest The
variation is mainly in the detail or in the
extent, depending mainly on the means
of the owner or the acreage, but rarly
affected by any disposition to have any
thing different from the regulation arti
Gle of ten or twenty years ago.
The time will come when a garden of
our native vegetation will be the envy
of those who have more Yet very little
do We see of any movement in that di-
rection In few yards in Los Angeles
there is a specimen of the large white
bush poppy, yet you may travel for miles
before you see another native plant. If
this one came from the middle of Africa
and had to be coddled in winter it would
be thought a wonder. But in its great
white petals around the center of brigh.
gold, POPPY, too, growing ON bush,
very few see anything to wonder at as
soon as they learn it is a tenant of our
gravelly washes
The seeds of the scarlet 1arkspur sold
in Germany twenty-five years ago for
$50 an ounce, yet the CHARGES are you
would have to send there today if you
want some in haste. This is common on
the washes and one of the handsomest
plants in the world. Before the discovery
of California it was a maxim in botany
that the larkspur could not be of any
color but blue. This responds readily to
cultivation, and with plenty of water is
like a fountain of strontium fire. Yet
we never see it in airy garden. 1t is toe
cheap. 1t does not come from Asia
Many of our mints and sages are not
only beautiful but curious, such as some
varieties of the chilla that the native
Californians used to put in pinole. This
has soft, purple tint, shading to law
ender, with large, elegant leaves, sew
eral heads around a stalk, with leaves
soft and downy. 1t could be grown any
where and will take care of itself.
A variety of stonecrop with a Ions
stem from which tubular flowers OF
scarlet hang in long chains over the
mealy leaves is also one of the toughest
of plants and will grow almost on the
side of granite boulder 1t is far more
graceful and pretty than any of the
fiashy stonecrops commonly cultivated
Yet 1 have never seen it except upon the
bare dry rocks, in whose cracks it -four
ishes during the driest summer and af-
ter the shortest rainfall.
Though short-lived, the field poppy
and the violet would grow as well as
other ANIMALS and the lavender tulip
that smiles later in the season is as fail
as any flower of the garden. And who
can find fault with the Mariposa lily,
or the twining vetch or wild pea that
with such bright green leaves and pur-
pie and crimson flowers hangs over SC
many bushes and rock piles just beyond
our doors; one of the first to bloom when
the rains have come? Should it not be
as attractive as the faring Gala, for