re it is not appreciated.
The irrigating ditch is an impartial distributer. It gathers all the
alien weeds that come west in garden and grass seeds and affords
them harbor in its banks. There one finds the European mallow (Malva
rotundifolia) spreading out to the streets with the summer overflow, and
every spring a dandelion or two, brought in with the blue grass seed,
uncurls in the swardy soil. Farther than either of these have come the
lilies that the Chinese coolies cultivate in adjacent mud holes for
their foodful bulbs. The seegoo establishes itself very readily in
swampy borders, and the white blossom spikes among the arrow-pointed
leaves are quite as acceptable to the eye as any native species.

In the neighborhood of towns founded by the Spanish Californians,
whether this plant is native to the locality or not, one can always find
aromatic clumps of yerba buena, the "good herb" (Micromeria douglassii).
The virtue of it as a febrifuge was taught to the mission fathers by the
neophytes, and wise old dames of my acquaintance have worked astonishing
cures with it and the succulent yerba mansa. This last is native to wet
meadows and distinguished enough to have a family all to itself.

Where the irrigating ditches are shallow and a little neglected, they
choke quickly with watercress that multiplies about the lowest Sierra
springs. It is characteristic of the frequenters of water borders near
man haunts, that they are chiefly of the sorts that are useful to
man, as if they made their services an excuse for the intrusion. The
joint-grass of soggy pastures produces edible, nut-flavored tubers,
called by the Indians taboose. The common reed of the ultramontane
marshes (here Phragmites vulgaris), a very stately, whispering reed,
light and strong for shafts or arrows, affords sweet sap and pith which
makes a passable sugar.

It seems the secrets of plant powers and influences yield themselves
most readily to primitive peoples, at least one never hears of the
knowledge coming from any other source. The Indian never concerns
himself, as the botanist and the poet, with the plant's appearances and
relations, but with what it can do for him.

It can do much, but how do you suppose he finds it out; what instincts
or accidents guide him? How does a cat know when to eat catnip? Why do
western bred cattle avoid loco weed, and strangers eat it and go mad?
One might suppose that in a time of famine the Paiutes digged wild
parsn