THE FLORA OF YO SEMITE. 
BY KATHERINE BRANDEGEE. 
Several members of the California Botanical Club have this year 
made large and important collections in and about Yo Semite, and 
these collections having been submitted to me form, with copious 
notes from Mr. J. M. Hutchings, the well-known pioneer of the val- 
ley, the basis of the following notes upon some of the more import- 
ant plants of the region. The collection made by Mrs. Willie C. Dodd 
was much the larger. Those of Miss Ernestine Arnold and Mr. 
Hutchings while of less extent contained many interesting plants.* 
Neither of them is strictly confined to the valley proper but in- 
cludes the surrounding heights, and the region extending from 
Wawona on the south to Cloud’s Rest on the north. 
TREES AND SHRUBS. 
The trees and shrubs of the region are quite diverse as might be 
expected from the great differences in altitude, the floor of the val- 
ley being only about 4,000 feet, while its precipitous walls are 7,000 
to 8,000, and Cloud’s Rest, only a short distance above the valley, 
is 11,000 feet. 
The California lilacs while not so abundant as in the coast moun- 
tains are fairly well represented. Ceanothus integerrimus, with its 
feathery, usually white, but sometimes blue plumes, grows at the 
_ lower elevations as does the closely related C. parvifolius; C. decum- 
_ bens, slender and trailing with small heads of pale blue flowers, and 
C. prostratus covering its ‘‘squaw mats’’ with a profusion of pur- 
ple flowers, are found at higher altitudes, as is also the ‘‘snow 
bush’? (C. cordulatus), which is white-flowered, glaucous, “ low, 
- flat-topped, and much spreading.” Of this bush, which on the 
high slopes grows two to four feet high often in extensive semi- 
_ thorny thickets, not dense enough to walk upon and both too dense 
and too low to get through, the exploring botanist is likely to have 
~ lively recollections. It forms one of the most exasperating kinds of 
_“‘chapparal’’ known to Californians. 
© cuneatus, one of the common chapparals of the western part of 
"I have not been able for lack of time to examine the collection of Miss: Emily 
_ Edmunds. 
