9HMKJM - The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online

21 8
BAR WWIAHTA.
exceptions already specially noted, we may say that
almost every characteristic form in the vegetation of
the Atlantic States is wanting in California, and the
characteristic plants and trees of California are want-
ing here.
California has no magnolia nor tulip trees, nor star-
anise tree ; no so-called papaw (Asimina) ; no barberry
of the common single-leaved sort ; no Podophyllum or
other of the peculiar associated genera ; no nelumbo
nor white water-lily ; no prickly ash nor sumach ; no
loblolly-bay nor Stuartia trees ;
; no basswood nor linden-
neither locust, honey-locust, coffee-trees (Cym-
nocladus) nor yellow-wood (Cladrastis) ; nothing an-
swering to Hydrangea or witch-hazel, to gum-trees
(Nyssa and Liquidambar), Viburnum or Diervilla ; it
has few asters and golden-rods ; no lobelias ; no huckle-
berries and hardly any blueberries ;
no Epigaea, charm
of our earliest Eastern spring, tempering an icy April
wind with a delicious wild fragrance ; no Kalmia nor
Clethra, nor holly, nor persimmon ; no catalpa-tree, nor
trumpet-creeper (Tecoma)
; nothing answering to sas-
safras, nor to benzoin-tree, nor to hickory; neither
mulberry nor elm ; no beech, true chestnut, hornbeam,
and the enu-
nor ironwood, nor a proper birch-tree ;
meration might be continued very much further by
naming herbaceous plants and others familiar only to
botanists.
In their place California is filled with plants of
other types — trees, shrubs, and herbs, of which I will
only remark that they are, with one or two exceptions,
as different from the plants of the Eastern Asiatic
region with which we are concerned (Japan, China, and