1874 San Diego City Directory
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AMONG THE WILD FLOWERS.
every Eastern saxifrage, though accustomed to meagre fare, and taking fast hold in "the clefts of the rocks." In the sunny exposure in the arroyas occurs a shrub, apparently an Eriogonin, which, in December, adorns its fine cut foliage with beads of small, white flowers. For many weeks no others, except the above named, are conspicuous in uncultivated grounds. Soon a bright yellow flower, probably a Gaura, hugs the soil, which it adorns with its bright stars, and a yellow violet, its petals shaded on the back with a rich brown, and its throat marked with dark lines, throws up its long peduncles from its leafy prostrate stem. Over the stumps of laurel (Lithroealaurina) soon begin to trail the long green stems of the mandrake (Cucumis perennis), and to hang out its racemes of white flowers. This extraordinary plant is possessed of a vast storehouse of supplies, and appears to be capable of enduring a siege through years of drought. Its corm is a solid fleshy mass, often exceeding the size of a bushel measure, and to the taste, intensely bitter. From this mass the long stems arise annually and adorn large clumps of shrubbery with their green palmate leafage, and on the pistillate plant are developed, in March, the green spring cucumbers.
A few days bringing increase of heat appear, and life leaps upward, bloom and beauty increase around us, and the purple blossoms of the Alfilarilla (pronounced Elfillaree), Spanish Alfiler (a pin), the clover of this region (Erodium maschatum) appear. This plant presents the aspect of a flattened tuft of fine cut leaves pressed to the ground; but where the soil is good, and it can obtain an undistrubed growth, it produces a heavy crop of leafage, which probably should prove as valuable for hay its it does for pasturage. It appears to endure the drought with extraordinary persistence, and to flourish on hill-sides where the true clovers would assuredly fail for want of moisture.
It will probably surprise our Eastern friends to learn that the horses, cattle and sheep of Southern California are pastured upon geraniums; for to this order the Erodium belongs, being placed indeed between the geraniums and the pelargoniums. Intermixed with. the Alfilarilla appear the slender succulent stains and narrow spatulate leaves of the
