There are two kinds of Grayia, named after Asa Gray; low shrubs; the
stamens and pistils in separate flowers, on the same or on different
plants.
[Sidenote: =Hop Sage=
_Gràyia spinòsa_ (_G. polygaloides_)
=Greenish, with red bracts
Spring
Calif., Nev., Utah, Ariz.=]
An odd and beautiful desert shrub, about three feet high, very dense
in form, with interlacing, angular, gray branches, spiny and crowded
with small, alternate, toothless leaves, pale-green and thickish, but
not stiff. The flowers are small and inconspicuous, but the pistillate
ones are enveloped in conspicuous bracts, which enlarge and become
papery in fruit, something like those of Docks, and often change from
yellowish-green to all sorts of beautiful, bright, warm tints of pink,
or to magenta, and the branches become loaded with beautifully shaded
bunches of these curious seed-vessels, giving a strange, crowded look
to the shrub, which in favorable situations, such as the Mohave Desert,
makes splendid masses of color, especially when contrasted with the
pale gray of Sage-brush.
There is only one kind of Cycloloma; leaves alternate, smooth or downy,
irregularly toothed; flowers perfect or pistillate, with five sepals,
five stamens, and two or three styles; fruit winged horizontally.
[Sidenote: =Tumbleweed=
_Cyclolòma atriplicifòlium_
=Purple or green
Summer
West of Mississippi River=]
Very curious round plants, six to twenty inches high, usually purple
all over, sometimes green and rarely white, giving a brilliant effect
in the fall to the sandy wastes they inhabit. They are a mass of
interlacing branches, with hardly any leaves, except at the base, and
very small flowers. When their seeds are ripe, and they are dry and
brittle, the wind easily uproots them and starts them careening across
the plain, their seeds flying out by the way. They turn over and over
and leap along, as if they were alive, bringing up at last against
a wire fence, or some such obstacle, where perhaps a traveler sees
them from the train and wonders at the extraordinary-looking, dry,
round bunches. There are other Tumble-weeds, such as Tumbling Mustard,
_Sisymbrium allissimum_, and _Amaránthus álbus_, not of this family.
[Illustration: Hop Sage--Grayia polygaloides.]