FLOWERS OF HIGH ALTIT06E^ : 



capsule in your garden lilies, or in any wild species 

 near you. 



The cows love the Wild Onion. If at sunset in 

 a mountain pass you meet a herd returning from the 

 day pasturage, their breath nearly makes you faint. 

 Quite different from "the sweet breath of kine" of 

 the poet. The milk is tainted so strongly that the 

 taste appears even in biscuits and cakes. There is 

 no way to keep the cattle in the Sierras from Wild 

 Onion, if there be any in their neighborhood, except 

 by locking them in a corral. Once free, they rush 

 to it, as a boy does to a fire, and with more reason. 



The Wild Onion is called Allium bisceptrum by 

 scientists. Allium is the ancient Latin name for the 

 genus, and bisceptrum describes the two crests on 

 each lobe of the seed-case that this species wears. 



Another member of the Lily family that seeks the 

 Sierras is Veratrum californicum, or False Helle- 

 bore. This tall beauty is very unlike Alpine Lily 

 or Wild Onion in appearance; but it has their true 

 lily traits of the flower stalk coming from a root- 

 stock of several years development, of having flow- 

 ers with six segments and six stamens, and of ripen- 

 ing a three-celled capsule. 



The Veratrum sends up a stout stalk from three 

 to eight feet high, either near the creek bank or on 

 a hillside, but always in good soil and never from 

 the broken rock beds in which so many Sierran 



