52 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



dens support a dense growth of Briogonum, Yarrow, Gcran- 

 iitni, Br'ujcron and Balsanwrrhiza with wild rose and dogwood 

 along the creeks, sego stars in the sagebrush, pink buttercups 

 and balm among the rocks on the summits. Why care whether 

 corn and cabbages are growing in the town? 



By the fourth of July the ruddy sheen of the ripened 

 June grass has replaced the floral display upon the lower 

 slopes of the v^dley and proclaimed the advent of the late 

 aestival period. The available moisture of the soil has disap- 

 peared. It is hot, arid and dusty. Dense growths of pestif- 

 erous weeds are beginning to excite the maledictions of pro- 

 perty owners and sufferers from hay fever. But plants as 

 well as men find agreeable haunts in the high wooded hollows 

 along the headwaters of the creeks. Fragrant mint and yar- 

 row, the sweet blue eyes of grass and speedwell, and flames 

 of monkey-flower and painted tip are in the meadows. Rag- 

 wort and monk's-hood strive to overtop the shrubs. Currants, 

 chokecherries and service-berries hang ripe for the taking. 

 Apparently this is the end of the floral year. But by the mid- 

 dle of August sunflowers are everywhere in great patches and 

 in long golden trails in every direction. The grasses are sere 

 and brown but the green clumps of rabbit-brush and grease- 

 wood and the gray blur of the various kinds of "sage" are 

 becoming increasingly conspicuous. Water in the reservoirs 

 and ditches is getting dangerously low. We are praying for 

 rain. 



* At last it comes and with it the autumn blaze, the halcyon 

 time of all the year for all the great dry lands of the west. 

 The torchweed's glow gilds all the gulches. Great fields of 

 rabbit-brush afire with bloom stretch endlessly with here and 

 there amongst them the ruddy emliers of patches of Russian 

 thistle. Crimson tongues of maple on the hillsides, spurts of 



