The author of the paragraphs quoted below, excerpted from a longer piece on California plants then assigned to the Liliaceae, is Francis M Fultz (1857-1948). Fultz is best known for his popular guide to the SoCal chaparral, The Elfin-Forest of California. Fultz was an avid botanizer and member of the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club.
I find this passage notable not only because it’s the earliest instance I’ve seen of the Joshua tree origin myth — interestingly, attributed to generic “emigrants” and “argonauts” (read: 49ers and their cohort) rather than Mormons — but also because this earliest instance I’ve seen comes from the pen of an emphatically Angeleno writer. This leads me to suspect that the name may have originated in Utah, but the story in Southern California. Also noteworthy: the obsolete botanical name Clistoyucca, the spelling of which I have corrected from its original appearance in the Scientific American. Fultz’s expressed disdain for the Joshua trees may be tongue-in-cheek, or it may not. Coastal Californian environmentalists’ disregard for the deserts is an old story.
The Lilies of the Field; Beautiful and Striking Wild Lilies of California’s Fields
Printed in the Scientific American Supplement, Vol. 88 No. 2275; August 9, 1919
The Joshua-Tree (Clistoyucca arborescens) is a desert plant, attaining its largest stature and most luxurious growth in the Mohave Desert. There it commonly grows to a height of fifteen or twenty feet and about as many inches in diameter. Extra large individuals may reach two feet in thickness and thirty feet In height. They are strange and weird in appearance. It is doubtful if the world produces more grotesque objects in the way of trees. Until the trunks reach the height of eight or ten feet they are set with bristling leaves from the ground up. Then the tree begins to bloom, and the branching commences by forking at the top. Each fork then divides, and the branching thus goes on, until the top is a mass of short stubby stems sticking out at all sorts of angles. The leaves along the trunk gradually droop and hang downward. In old age the lower part of the trunk becomes entirely bare. The branches are apt to remain covered, however, and the end of each is armed with tufts of long dagger-like leaves that successfully keep all would-be intruders at a respectful distance.
In March and April the large clusters of greenish white flowers appear, thrust out as it were from the tufts of leaves at the ends of the trunk and stubby branches. Each cluster contains numerous bells which are from one to two inches across. At that time the yucca-covered desert wears an attractive dress. As you ride swiftly by on a railway train, you may become wildly enthusiastic over the beauty of the Yucca. But it is well that you view the flowers from some little distance, for they give off a strong fetid odor that is exceedingly disagreeable. It would seem as if the bunch of dagger-leaves with which each flower cluster is surrounded were enough protection, without the addition of the horrible smell. Whenever I see the Joshua-Trees I think how considerate they have been in choosing to make their home where few men have a desire to live.
Just how and when this desert yucca came by Its name of “Joshua-Tree” no one seems definitely to know. The name dates from the earliest emigrant trains’ that crossed the deserts, and it is claimed by some that these early argonauts saw in the grotesque yuccas signs which pointed to a land of promise.
