THE PLANT WOULD 229 



At tlie very foot of the snow a fringe of Acer gJahnim skirts the 

 ravine. The nearest point from wliich this has been reported is the 

 Panamint mountains some 200 miles to the north, where it was col- 

 lected by the Death Valley Expedition. It is here a graceful shrub, 

 eight to twelve feet high, and at the time of my visit was loaded with 

 well-grown fruit. Some of the leaves were covered with the brilliant 

 scarlet blotches of an elegant ascomycetacous fungus, too young for 

 determination. 



On the rocks from which the maples grew were clumi)s of Polysti- 

 eJmm scopulinum, a fern which I have collected also in one other south- 

 ern California locality. I cannot find any station reported for this 

 fern within 500 miles so far south.* With it also grows Polypodium 

 vulgm^e, which has not been reported from any place within an equal 

 distance,! but which may well be expected elsewhere at high altitudes. 

 The plants are rather intermediate between the species and the variety 

 occidentalis, the form attributed to California by recent writers. The 

 last of this group is Senecio triangularis, for which the nearest reporced 

 station is the Big Tree Caiion of the Kaweah River, in Kern county. 



These lists are not extensive, but it seems to me they are notable for 

 a single narrow caiion, hardly a mile long. Repeated visits might be ex- 

 pected to enlarge them, for in the upper part of the chasm which had 

 opened between the snow-bank and the canon side, the crevices of the 

 rock were full of plants just starting into growth. Every night the 

 snow, only a foot or two away, must reduce the temperature to the 

 freezing point. They were growing as plants grow in the far north, or 

 on alpine heights, at the edge of the snow, but their gro"v\i;h was vigor- 

 ous. They were quite too young to permit even a guess as to what 

 they might be, except one, a maidenhair fern, which was just uncoiling 

 the tips of its delicate fronds. It appeared to be Adiaufnm Capillvs- 

 Veneris, and if it were, is as far above its usual haunts in this region 

 as some of the other i)lants are below theirs. One's curiosity was 

 piqued as to what its companions might be, for what might not be 

 hoped from these frigid surroundings? Hardly was it to be expected 

 that the ordinary inhabitants of these southern mountains should have 

 adapted themselves to this exceptional environment. But the determi- 

 nation of these questions must be left for later visits, should an oppor- 

 tunity permit, or, perhaps, for other visitors, 



San Bernardino, California. 



*" Santa Cruz and Mendocino Counties," M. E. Jones, Ferns of the West, 26. 

 "Near Shasta," Lemmon, Ferns Pac. Coast, 6. 



t"Yo Semite." Lemmon,/. c. "Near San Francisco." D. G. Katon. in Brew. 

 & Wats. Bot. Cal. 2: 334. 



