In the case of native annuals, either the duration of their vegetation is extremely short, ending with or shortly after the cessation of rains; or else their tap roots descend so low, and the nutritive rootlets are developed at such depth, as to be beyond reach of the summer’s heat and drought. For while it is true that rootlets immersed in air-dry soil may absorb plant-food, this absorption is very slow and can only be auxiliary to the main root system which, instead of terminating in the surface soil as in the humid region, will be found to begin to branch off at depths of 15 and 18 inches, and may then in sandy lands descend to from 4 to 7 feet even in the case of annual fibrous-rooted plants like wheat and barley.[64] In the case of maize the roots of a late-planted crop may sometimes be found descending along the walls of the sun-cracks in heavy clay land poorly cultivated; and it frequently matures a crop without the aid of a single shower after planting. See figures 33, 34. [64] Shaler (Origin and Nature of Soils; 12th Rept. U. S. Geol. Survey, p. 311) says: “Annual plants cannot in their brief period of growth push their roots more than six to twelve inches below their root-crowns”—a generalization measurably true for the humid region only. According to F. J. Alway, the roots of cereals penetrate to 5-7 feet in Saskatchewan, also. [Illustration: FIG. 31.—Hop Root from Sacramento Bench-land.] The annexed plate (No. 32) shows the main roots of two native perennial weeds of California, the goosefoot (_Chenopodium californicum_) and the figwort (_Scrophularia californica_), common on the lower slopes of the coast ranges. The soil was a heavy clay loam or “black adobe” resulting from the weathering of the clay shale bedrock, fragments of which are so abundantly intermixed with the substrata that excavation of the roots became very difficult. Yet the main root of the goosefoot went down below the depth of eleven feet. The main root of the figwort, also, was followed below the depth of ten feet without reaching the extreme end. This proves clearly that the great penetration of the goosefoot was not, as might be supposed, due to its bulbous root. Yet such thickening of the root just below the crown is a rather common feature in arid-region plants, and can here be noted even in the figwort, within whose botanical relationship bulbous roots are almost unknown.