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Jepson Field Book Transcriptions · Jepson Herbarium
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66_130 To Dunn_s Peak a-Botanizing One day, it was on a Monday, Ralph Platt and I, left the Academy early (it was a private school, with the high sounding title, California Normal and Scientific School), bound on a field trip to Dunn_s Peak. We rode my lazy riding pony Princess, but by dint of a lot of persuading from Ralph who rode behind me the distance from the town was covered in a remarkably short time. Carrying our botany collecting boxes, Ralph_s large one, my small one, we hurried through the orchards covering the plateau above the Ulatis to the point which rises abruptly from the valley level and makes a somewhat Bold bluff, Dunn_s Peak, at the middle of the valley on the east side. The bluff at its summit carried a thin fringe of native |
66_131 trees and its sides sloping sharply down to the bed of the Ulatis were too steep to be cultivated or even harried very closely either by grazing animals. So here the native plants persisted and were in full bloom. What a glorious sight! Here for the first time I saw the scarlet racemes of Pentstemon centranthifolius, the lovely azure blue of Pentstemon heterophyllus, the curious dark color of the Purple Milkweed, Gomphocarpus cordifolius as it was then called. What a fine place it was _ so clean and sweet, with all the dry aroma of May-time filling the air. The specimens gathered on that happy afternoon I have still. So, after loading up and climbing over all the bluff face |
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