46 PICTURING MIRACLES 



spring months, seldom lower than 4,000 feet eleva- 

 tion and on up to 9,000 feet, the plant sometimes 

 of only one or two spikes and as large as your wrist 

 pushes up through the leaf mold under the pines, 

 and grows to a foot or eighteen inches high. Occa- 

 sionally it grows in clusters as large as eighteen 

 inches in diameter with twenty-five or more spikes. 

 The red spikes grow about an inch a day. Motion 

 pictures taken at fifteen minute intervals for a week 

 show the plant growing up through the picture in 

 about thirty seconds and they also show the bracts 

 moving away from the opening of the bell-like 

 flowers. 



The snow plant was one of the first flowers to be 

 protected in Yosemite Park. Its brilliant red color 

 and isolated habit made gathering it a temptation. 

 There is now a fine of twenty-five dollars for picking 

 it and it is also protected by a State law in California. 



The Western Blue Flag Iris grows in great quan- 

 tities in the Yosemite meadows, which during the 

 blooming season in June are sometimes blue with 

 them. The plant grows in clusters a foot to eighteen 

 inches high. The buds, as large as your little finger, 

 start to open about five o'clock in the afternoon. In 

 the morning, when they have fully unfolded, they 

 are wonderfully beautiful just for a day is this 

 beauty, for by nightfall they begin to fold up, their 



