A European "weed," common everywhere. In California it grows to an enormous height, sometimes twelve feet, and when in bloom is a beautiful feature of the landscape, covering the fields with a shimmering sheet of pale gold. The leaves are dark-green, smooth or with a few hairs, all with leaf-stalks, the lower leaves large and jagged, cut into leaflets, the upper leaves mostly toothless. The fragrant flowers form long clusters, each flower about three-quarters of an inch across; the small, cylindrical pods stand erect, close to the branching stem. A valuable, antiseptic oil is made from the black, pungent seeds, exported from California by the ton.
White Bladder-pod—Lesquerella purpurea.
CAPER FAMILY. Capparidaceae.
The flowers of this family are much like the Mustards, but the stamens are all of equal length and are often more than six; the leaves are alternate and consist of three or several leaflets, with stalks, and the plant usually tastes bitter and disagreeable instead of pungent. There is no partition in the pods, which are on long, threadlike stalks; the ovary is superior and the seeds are kidney-shaped. Many flowers have only a rudimentary pistil and never produce fruit. The Caper, of which we eat the pickled flower-buds for a relish, is a shrub which grows in the Levant. The family is quite large and flourishes in warm regions.
There are several kinds of Cleomella, resembling Cleome, except that the pods are different.
Cleomella
Cleomélla lóngipes
Yellow
Spring
Nev., Cal., Oreg.
This is a handsome, rather odd-looking plant, with a stout, smooth, yellowish or purplish stem, sometimes branching and over a foot tall. The leaves are bright light-green, smooth, toothless and slightly thickish, and the three leaflets are sometimes each tipped with a hair, and have a tuft of small hairs at the base of the leaf-stalk, in place of a stipule. The flowers are about half an inch across, and are a beautiful warm shade of golden-yellow, the long stamens being of the same color and giving a very pretty feathery appearance to the large cluster. The pods are queer-looking little things and stick straight out from the stem. This has a slightly unpleasant smell, but looks very gay and pretty in the fields and along the edges of the mesas around Reno.
